


On the Path Unwinding

by PanBoleyn



Series: Between the Sand and Stone [6]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 41st Timeline (The Magicians), Accidental Voyeurism, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brief Qualice, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Quentin Coldwater's Canonical Oral Fixation, Semi-Public Sex, Timeline Shenanigans, season one AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:08:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 44,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25980340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: "You need to go off the garden path."- Jane Chatwin"The bridge between your past self and your present self is delicate. If you break it…"- Alice QuinnAfter forty timeloops, one little shift caused by Quentin's timeshare spell was enough to create a splinter timeline - Timeline 41. In Timeline 41, "Mike" is around for longer, but Eliot, Margo, and Quentin get closer in the end. So do Alice and Penny. Friendships take unexpected turns, and they left the garden path behind long ago. But all roads lead, in the end, to Fillory.Part of a series but can be mostly read as a standalone.
Relationships: Margo Hanson & Eliot Waugh, Mike McCormick/Eliot Waugh, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater/Margo Hanson, Quentin Coldwater/Margo Hanson/Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Between the Sand and Stone [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623388
Comments: 90
Kudos: 122





	1. Get A Grip, Take A Deep Breath

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I hope this finds you well. I've been waiting to start this particular fic for over a year now - I've had the idea for Timeline 41 since 4.11 aired, it was just a matter of waiting for the right story. It's my first time writing the s1 versions of these guys, so I hope it works out!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter are all consent-centric - Quentin/Alice happening due to the influence of the fox magic is more explicit here than in the show, and of course all references to Eliot/Mike involve a consent problem due to the fact that Mike is actually Martin possessing Mike. 
> 
> As ever, thanks to my enablers and my cheerleaders for this verse in particular, and to Maii for reading my draft. (And for Gabriel.)

Quentin blinks, and the room changes. 

“What - Vix -?” He sways on his feet and looks up again to see Alice staring at him. Alice’s eyes are red, like she’s been crying. “What’s wrong?” Hadn’t they been kissing a moment ago? Except… Alice’s clothes had been different and her hair had been different…

Quentin’s own hair brushes the back of his neck as he shakes his head, trying to clear it, and he suddenly realizes something. He hadn’t felt that once in the last hour or two, his head had felt curiously light like when he’d been little and his mother had insisted he keep his hair short. And his clothes were different too, weren’t they? 

More than anything, he can still feel the tingle of magic on his fingertips, but he doesn’t remember _casting_ anything.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Alice says, her voice unsteady. “I don’t remember anything clearly for the last… maybe hour or so? The last thing I know for sure we were in your room, we were making out, and then - I was here. What do you remember?” 

“I was still here,” Quentin says slowly, “at Brakebills South. But in a different room, and I’m not sure how I got there. Your clothes were different and I think your hair was lighter. Oh, and there was a lot of rope, we had to tie it into knots.” 

_And I kept trying to talk you into sneaking off to hook up_ , he doesn’t add, because Alice still looks like she’d been crying. And now he thinks about it, in that odd room with the ropes, Alice had seemed leery of him, had almost flinched away from him. Had seemed conflicted even as she leaned up to kiss him in that last moment. 

God, his head hurts.

“What do you remember?” he asks, trying to think through the sudden pounding headache. “Forget clearly, just - anything at all.”

“Not much,” Alice says grimly. “We were in my room, and then we were here. And I think - I feel like you were with me, but you… you didn’t like me at all anymore, I don’t know what I did but something was really wrong, Q. I think I remember your eyes and I’ve never seen them so cold. And there’s… I was clearly doing a spell, but I don’t know what spell, there’s not enough materials left to tell me what I did,” she says, frowning as she looks around. 

“I don’t like this place,” she says finally, avoiding Quentin’s eyes. 

And Quentin - agrees. Until a couple of hours ago, he’d thought he would always remember Brakebills South fondly, remember it as the place that brought him and Alice together. But it’s like now he can _see it_ , cold and strange as the snowscape outside. “Did we - want any of this?” he asks, shoving his hands in his pockets. He looks over at Alice but can’t quite meet her eyes, his gaze falling to her hands twisting nervously. “I mean,” he continues hurriedly. “I like you. A lot. Like, really a lot. But I wasn’t, um. Ready to, to ask you out on a _date_ , much less, well.”

He’d wanted to, but he hadn’t quite found his nerve. And there’d been a sort of - it’s probably not cool to ask out the girl you like when you haven’t quite shaken the inconvenient crush on your impossible new friend. Bisexual problems indeed, but his crushes on Julia and James had been sort of blocked by them dating each other, so it was a new situation for him to have crushes on two people who, being single, were theoretically available. Although with Quentin as the other party, that was, well, _very_ theoretical.

So he’d been waiting to figure out how to fix that and also gather his nerve to ask Alice out. But then bam, they’re foxes having fox sex and then humans having… sex that still felt kind of like they were foxes. And now that he’s spent time with Alice where she seemed almost afraid to touch him but doesn’t remember it, that bothers Quentin. A lot.

“Did Mayakovsky do this too? Whatever it was?” Alice asks, and Quentin looks up to meet her eyes then, sees the same mounting horror that he feels himself. 

“I - I don’t know. That would make sense, but I don’t understand why he would…” 

“Q, why would he magic us into having sex? I don’t think this guy follows any rules but his own.”

“So what does that mean?” Quentin makes himself ask when she doesn’t say anything else. “Are we - I mean -” 

“You said you weren’t ready. Neither was I. I don’t think - if we were to try and make a relationship of this right now, I don’t think either of us could ever trust that it was real, do you? Maybe that’s why this… sense of you that I have didn’t like me anymore. Maybe we pushed too far, too fast, and broke whatever might have been,” Alice says, and Quentin watches her set her jaw, and she’s brilliant and stubborn and they’ve gotten along so well here, and he _wants_ \- 

But she’s also right. Isn’t she? If it had just been about the foxes, maybe, but the mind games are too much. Things are too strange, with no way to know what’s real and what isn’t. Quentin thinks of an Alice with paler hair and something sharper about her face, and eyes somehow impossibly more sad even than this Alice, here and now who had been crying. He thinks of his head feeling too light without the weight of his hair, clothing he’s never worn. 

“We can be friends, at least, and good ones maybe?” Julia, he remembers, Julia and how he’d thrown it in her face, but he never would have if things weren’t already fucked - he’d been prepared to never speak of it and he can do that with Alice, can’t he? He can be her friend because she’s amazing and he likes spending time with her, and he doesn’t want to lose her even if they can’t be what he’d hoped they would be. 

“We can do that,” Alice says, and she offers him her hand to - to shake on it of all things. And he takes it, and he does shake her hand, because what else is there to do?

Something - shifts. He can feel it, somehow. Something changing in the air. He doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know if he wants to. But he thinks - “We’re OK. We can, can be OK. As soon as we’re out of this fucking place, anyway.” 

“God,” Alice says, letting go of Quentin’s hand and leaning back against the table. “I can’t _wait_ to be out of here. Antarctica can go to hell, what do you say?” 

“We can’t, I think the animals like it, you told me you like penguins, remember?” Quentin says before he can stop himself, and then Alice chokes on a sound like a laugh, and he’s laughing too, and it’s fucking hysteria and not in the good way but. But it’s something, as they sink to the floor and at some point end up holding hands again.

The hand holding isn’t about liking each other, just now. It’s more about having an anchor, as the world spins and re-forms around them in the wake of magic that cut far, far too deep.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin goes to the cafeteria after he and Alice split off, because he doesn’t really want to go back to his room where they’d been in the middle of ripping each other’s clothes off before… before… 

Before whatever happened. 

God. 

He goes to the cafeteria because he has to do something, and also he feels weirdly hungry, in spite of everything. Like he’s barely eaten in weeks or something, which isn’t true at all but he _feels it,_ hungry and a little shaky like his blood sugar’s low. 

Still, even after he gets food, he toys with it rather than eating it, lost in brooding. 

“Hey - Quentin, right? You’re not usually here at this shift.” 

“Yeah, well,” Quentin shrugs. “Um…” He knows this guy, redheaded and blue-eyed, but he can’t remember…

“Gabriel Carter, we had Basic Magical Theory together.” Gabriel Carter says as he sits down with his own tray and a worn pack of cards. Quentin glances at it, fingers itching for the familiarity of a card deck, and Gabriel grins. “Found these in my room. You play?”

"Yeah. I do tricks too," Quentin says, shrugging as he tucks his hair behind his ear.

"Ever play Push? Magicians' card game."

Wait. There's a card game with magic, and no one told him that? "No, where can I learn how?"

Gabriel smiles, and Quentin notices in spite of himself that it's a cute smile. _Gabriel_ is cute, and learning to play Push from him and getting more of those smiles is easing some of the fox-restlessness still thrumming under Quentin’s skin.

“It works better,” Gabriel says, “if you already know the deck. I doubt you’ll manage card illusions like we do at the Castle because you’re a physical kid, but still, it helps to know the deck. Best I’ve ever seen was this guy, name was… oh, what was it… Oh! Mike Ross, that was it, he had an eidetic memory, remembered every card that was dealt so he could basically count cards automatically. Not at Brakebills, he’s a hedge in the city, I think he might be a lawyer, but that man could play. I mean I’m _sure_ he was mixing Muggle and magical ways of cheating, but the only real rule is don’t get caught, right?”

Quentin does _not_ have an eidetic memory. But he does, in fact, know how to count cards. He’s not _as_ good at counting cards as he is at palming them, but by most standards he is very good at both. So he smiles, and says, “I know the deck very well.” 

It’s what comes of spending hours at a time practicing tricks; you can’t help but get a feel for the deck itself. And so he finds that he picks up the casts that go with Magician card games faster than he ever picked up a single Popper, much less the more complicated things. 

He feels like Harry Potter the first time he got on a broom, trying these spells. Finally, something that comes naturally. 

Card probability can’t be a discipline, can it? What house would that even be?

Hours later they’re still playing - they played through the night, Quentin realizes - and all the first-years are being rounded up to be sent back to Brakebills proper. Alice glances Quentin’s way when he shows up with Gabriel, but doesn’t say anything. Penny shows up without Kady, and Quentin can’t help but ask where she is.

“Who cares?” Penny says, and it’s not really any more unfriendly than he ever is with Quentin but there’s something raw under it. Quentin doesn’t like Penny any more than Penny likes him, for all that the first Trial proved they can work pretty well together when it’s absolutely necessary. But when he still feels pretty banged up himself, he can’t help but feel bad for him. 

What the fuck is it about this place? Quentin has to wonder how many of the other students, people he mostly doesn’t know, are leaving somehow fucked up by something that happened here? The Teagan twins from his Basic Uses of Stone and Crystal class, are grim faced while their friend - he thinks her name’s Kit - is all tense, lips pressed together in a thin line. 

Almost everyone looks worn out, and it’s hard to tell how much of that is from the pace of learning and how much is from, well, shit like getting electrocuted because of a reluctance to use mind control magic. Quentin’s sure he and Alice aren’t the only ones who got that treatment for one thing or another. Bleakly, he wonders if any of the others were turned into animals and sent out into the snow, and if any of them ended up having sex.

He hears Mayakovsky say something to Alice, but he’s in the back of the line with Gabriel so he can’t hear what it is. When he goes by, though… “Quentin. I removed your inhibitions. Go do interesting things without them, unfinished boy.” 

Unfinished -? _What?_ Quentin doesn’t say anything at all, but Mayakovsky isn’t done yet. “Why the fox?” 

That makes Quentin stop, because - well. In spite of everything else, the thing about being a fox, like the thing about being a goose, is… “The fox knows what it wants,” he says through gritted teeth. Before he might have called the fox happy, but now, he’d cut out his tongue first. 

“The fox is in you now,” Mayakovsky says, and then Quentin is blinking in the bright sunlight of Brakebills, a day like all the other days somewhere between the nicest spring days and the prettiest autumn ones. 

_The fox is in you now._

God, he fucking hopes not.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


After escaping Mike and Eliot, Quentin goes back to his room and flops back on his mattress, folding his hands over his stomach and wishing that he was less of a damned idiot. It occurs to him, briefly, to wonder how he might have felt if, without all the damned interference, he and Alice had come back from South as a couple, instead of a pair of rather shaken friends. 

Maybe friends, she can’t even look at him.

(Briefly, he has to admit that Penny is probably at least as fucked up as they are, given the way he was talking about Kady when they left, but it’s not like Penny would tell Quentin of all people if that’s the case.)

Anyway. If he and Alice had come back together, then Quentin… well. He certainly hopes Eliot having a boyfriend wouldn’t bother him, because hopefully having a girlfriend he really likes would just… _undo_ Quentin’s inconvenient crush on Eliot, but as it is, well. As it is he’s kind of entertaining daydreams of punching Mike’s face in. Which is both a shitty thing to want to do to his _friend’s boyfriend_ and, also, he can’t throw a decent punch, it’s not even realistic.

Maybe he should try to hook up with someone at the next Cottage party. Maybe that will help. Even if he’s never particularly cared for one-night stands with strangers. He’s had them, usually when he’s feeling numb and wants to try to get out of his head, but they rarely go well and usually just aren’t that good anyway. Add that to the general awkwardness of his existence, and the odds of either managing a hookup _or_ that it will make him feel better are pretty damn low. 

Quentin sighs, scrubbing a palm across his face. Why did things have to get so complicated anyway? 

It should be comforting to consider that he’s finally over his longstanding infatuation with Julia, and that his milder crush on James vanished into the ether along with it. It would be, except that getting over Julia had literally required him developing crushes on both Alice and Eliot, and, oh yes. Let’s not forget the mental hospital illusion Julia trapped him in. 

In short, he’s in trouble.

“Oh what the fuck, fuck everything,” he grumbles, turning over and burying his face in his pillow. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he’s still exhausted from Brakebills South. He sleeps and he dreams, fractured images of a room that looks like Brakebills in greyscale, golden sparks swallowing him up, and - 

He wakes up gasping, pressing his hands to his head. Right, OK, no more napping. He’s up half the night more times than he isn’t without taking long naps partway through the day. So he gets up, grabs fresh clothes and the shower caddy he still uses from freshman year of undergrad (Molly bought a lot of his dorm gear in an awkward attempt to be nice to him) and goes to shower. They haven’t bathed in weeks, and it’s finally starting to hit him how gross he feels.

The peppermint two-in-one soap he uses at times like this makes him smell like candy canes, or so Julia used to say, but it always makes his head feel clearer and that’s what he needs. 

He stops back at his room long enough to get shoes and a book, then leaves the Cottage. He hears Eliot’s laughter round the back and hesitates briefly - he wants to talk to Eliot, maybe even tell him what happened at South. Talking to Eliot always somehow… makes things less horrible. But he’s busy with his new boyfriend, and Quentin knows how that shit goes. Best not to interrupt. 

It feels strange to be back at Brakebills proper, sitting under a tree in warm sunlight, in thin layered shirts and worn-soft jeans instead of the heavy South uniform and the snow and oddly sharp sunlight outside the windows. 

It feels strange to feel his still-damp hair sticking to his neck when some part of him feels like it should be shorter. His shoulder feels stiff, and he’s _still_ vaguely hungry like when he hasn’t eaten in a while but the feeling has become more like background noise. He might head over to the little cafe soon, get coffee and a muffin or something.

God, what did Mayakovsky _do_ to them? He wishes he could talk to Alice about it, but since their last conversation she’s barely looked at him. It’s like whatever kinship they found in being mutually screwed with just fell apart. He understands, because he swears he can still smell fox-her, lingering on the edges of his senses, but understanding doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. 

And Julia hates him, and Margo’s not here, and Eliot is… occupied, and - God. There’s no point to this. He doesn’t need a shoulder to cry on, he’s a fucking adult, he just needs to get out of his head for a while. So he opens his book and tries to lose himself in Timothy Zahn’s iconic take on the Star Wars universe. 

(Fillory just feels… too fraught right now, after what Penny told him before the Trials.)

“Hey, Quentin!” 

Quentin drops his book. “Oh, uh, Gabriel, hi,” he says, running a hand through his hair. He had more or less assumed that his conversation with Gabriel was going to go the way of South interactions in general; namely that he’d never talk to him again now that they were back. “Get settled back in and all?” 

“Yeah, half the crowd’s still gone - you know the break overlaps with our last couple days, right, so they get more time off? Fucking unfair, but there it is. We start up again before they do too, come to think of it.” Gabriel drops down next to Quentin, flopping back on the grass and resting his hands under his head. “Some of ‘em are staying over break, but not all, so at least it makes things a little more calm coming back from South.” 

“You sound like you know a lot about this,” Quentin says, setting his book in his lap and leaning back against the tree trunk. 

“Well, about half my family has alumni keys, and the other half is magic too, just without the piece of paper from Brakebills. Although that’s kind of a point of pride for them, really.” 

“Being hedges?” Quentin asks, curious now. He’d kind of assumed everyone thought of hedges the way Eliot had described them, but come to think of it, Eliot is kind of… particular. That bodega hadn’t exactly been impressive, though. Even so, the memory of the disdain he’d thrown at Julia makes his stomach squirm a little now. 

“Mm, not exactly. It’s kind of complicated - older magic families that teach their kids independently. Mostly, they refuse to let their kids go to Brakebills but since my dad’s family’s all classical magicians trained either here or at the school up in Canada, they didn’t fight about my older sisters or me. I’m not the only one here now either - you know the Teagan twins?” 

_Everyone_ knows the Teagan twins, even socially-inept Quentin, because they’re kind of noticeable. Identical in every way except that they dress differently and Aislinn’s hair is dyed blue while Maureen’s is pale-pale green, they’re both psychics of some flavor or other. He’d seen them in passing at South with the others, looking deeply unimpressed with the proceedings. Kady had told him, Alice, and Penny at dinner one night that she’d heard one of the twins cursing out Mayakovsky in some language she thought might be Irish. He’d apparently found that funny.

“Yeah, obviously.” 

“ _Super_ old family, on both sides. The old families hang on to the old ways.”

Quentin finds real curiosity, not just the idle flash of it from earlier, cutting through his gloom. This doesn’t sound anything like the idea of magical culture or whatever that he’d gotten from Eliot or Margo, or from Mentor Week even. “That sounds… like old-school royalty or something. Is that your family too?” 

“Hm? Oh, no, not for the most part. I mean, I know some spells that the people here would call homebrew because they’re not _official_ , but for my mom’s family they’re as common as a freaking Popper. But the Davises are not that old. Hedges who made good, more or less.” Gabriel makes a face. “Shit, sorry for talking your ear off - I don’t get to talk about it much here, it’s better not to bring it up much, and you actually seemed curious but I shouldn’t assume.” 

Quentin, who God knows has rambled at people for much longer about things they were definitely not interested in, knows exactly how he feels. “No, it really is interesting. I don’t know much about any of this, you know? No one else in my family’s magic as far as I’m aware of, and all I really know about it is what they say in class or what Eliot and Margo have told me.”

“And, despite being known throughout the campus, those two are first-gens, right?”

“First-gens?” Quentin echoes. 

“Not from magical families. Like you.” 

“Oh. I don’t actually know, but probably?” Quentin remembers Eliot’s story about how he’d discovered his magic, which definitely sounded like a case of someone who hadn’t known it was even possible before it happened. So he’s certain about Eliot, he just doesn’t want to say so because it feels like halfway betraying a confidence. Margo, he’s genuinely not sure, but it seems likely she’s the same given how fixated she was on Mentor Week. If she was from a magical family, she’d have other connections, right?

“Yeah, so there’s a lot you don’t find out until you’re out of Brakebills,” Gabriel says. He’s playing with a woven bracelet on his wrist, horizontal stripes in two shades of green, then white, grey, and black. Quentin’s seen that before, but he can’t remember where offhand. “I mean, there’s also tons of stuff online, varying degrees of legit, most people whose magic kicks off early find things that way. LiveJournal’s big for it.” 

_“LiveJournal?”_ Quentin echoes. “That used to be the place for fandoms, but…” He still has a LiveJournal, actually. Hasn’t used it in ages, but maybe he can go to the tech shack and do some digging? Just because he’s at Brakebills is no reason not to augment things, right? Again he thinks of Julia and that guilt twists through him. 

Although, on second thought, maybe he shouldn’t do a search like that on Brakebills property. Next time he leaves campus then.

“Oh yeah, I can give you a few people to check out that are good.”

They end up going for coffee and sandwiches together, still talking about the ways you can find reliable magic online and how to find Push and magicians’ poker circuits in New York. And it’s - it’s nice, actually. Now that Quentin thinks about it, a lot of his conversations with people, except Eliot and Margo, tend to be about serious shit or classwork. Even with Eliot and Margo, unless they’re letting him ramble about stuff it’s usually more him listening to them. Which he likes a lot, especially on bad days when Eliot in particular lets Quentin curl up next to him and just be quiet while their voices wash over him, but… 

But this is nice too. 

With Alice, she’d kept up her bargain to tutor him for a while, so they’d mostly talked about classes when big things like first Charlie and then his dad weren’t coming up. Maybe he and Alice were never as close as he’d thought? 

“You know, you should come by the Castle,” Gabriel is saying as they settle at a table with their food, and Quentin blinks, coming back to himself. 

“Hmm?” 

“Illusionist Castle. My dorm, and also home base for the Brakebills card game circuit. I think you could have a lot of fun, don’t you?”

“Actually, I think I could.”

<><><>

  
  


Quentin starts spending most of his time either in his room or in the reading nook. Alice doesn’t like the nook or the common room it opens out onto, prefers the library or to work outside, and he’s finding himself responding to her evasion in kind. Something about being treated like he’s still half fox and might pounce on her just makes him feel weird. 

Although he guesses the way he’d stammered to Eliot and Mike about how he’d maybe seduced her instead of Alice doing the seducing as Eliot assumed… didn’t help his case. But that had just been awkwardness, he hadn’t meant anything by it.

Well, anyway, Alice is avoiding him and Eliot’s in the city staying over at Mike’s apartment. If part of Quentin thinks that is really fast, the rest of him is well aware of how much that is not his business. 

So he has the rest of the break more or less to himself, and he spends it reading. Not a Fillory book, or even another novel, but a book on cartomancy. It’s mostly fortune telling, which he doesn’t think he’d be much good at, but there’s some cool stuff in here on variants of warding magic, luck magic, and some others, using cards and card suits as symbols for people who are more comfortable with that than runes or something. 

About half the book’s on tarot, which Quentin doesn’t know much about. That was one of Julia’s high school enthusiasms, not his. He remembers her talking about some of it, though, and he has a book on the basics at the bottom of his black footlocker (another freshman year of college gift from Molly) that he bought because Julia was into it. It was supposed to be a gift, but then she dropped the idea and he just left the book in among his stuff. He should dig it out, compare and contrast. 

He got another book out of the library that he hasn’t started yet, on ink magic. Spells done through written or drawn things, on paper or objects or skin. He used to draw, back before his second therapist tried to make him do it as therapy and that kinda ruined it. But he misses it, and he’s been thinking about being an animal again. How as a goose or a fox, he just had to do what came naturally. 

Maybe he has to do that with magic too. Make it work for him by finding the ways it connects to things he can already do? Maybe that was the real point of animal transformation, to teach them to follow their instincts? It’s a thought, anyway, and he hasn’t got anything else to do but look into it. 

_You need to go off the garden path,_ his dream of Jane Chatwin said. 

His first night back from South, he dreamed of his own hands coloring in a design for a sunrise, made in pastel blocks. Since then, his dreams have mostly gone back to normal but there’ll be a flicker of an image in there, something bright and vivid and clear like snapshots of memories he doesn’t have. It makes him edgy and restless.

They’re probably not connected, but the dregs of fox magic under his skin have only added to his restlessness, and he might as well channel that energy into learning things, right? He doesn’t know what his dreams are about, but it seems likely shit will hit the fan again eventually. So maybe he should try to learn whatever he can. That was probably the one thing about South that made sense - there wasn’t much else to do, and as horrible as he is Mayakovsky knows his shit so Quentin feels like he maybe learned more there than he has up till now. 

It doesn’t excuse the bullshit, but it does make him think. He’s been trying to be Alice, who’s just _good_ at this, or Julia who was just good at everything. Or even Eliot or Margo, who act like there’s no effort involved. Except that Quentin has seen Eliot up at night studying when the general population can’t catch him - has in fact fallen asleep next to Eliot half covered in his own books a few times because if they were both up it was kind of nice to not be alone. 

(Quentin isn’t sure how Margo studies, but he suspects she has her ways same as Eliot.)

Maybe he should stop trying to be them. He told Fogg he wasn’t here to be told what magic was or wasn’t, but to find out for himself. The first known magic he did was build a house of cards. Sunderland told him that some of his card tricks were probably early manifestations of magic, though she’d said that wouldn’t help her narrow down a discipline since he did them by “subconscious casting via mundane methodology.”

He assumes that means sleight of hand. 

Still, maybe the trick to actually being decent at this is working through the things he’s already good at. It’s worth a shot, anyway, and so he spends his weekend starting to put the idea into practice. 

So he’ll begin with cartomancy and ink magic. And the next time he stops by the school store, he’ll get a couple unlined notebooks and a pack of colored pencils, as well as a pack of colored pens. He misses drawing, and he’s going to need the practice, isn’t he? Better than brooding, better than pining or being a third wheel. 

And maybe he’ll even take Gabriel up on his offer to come play cards at the Castle. Why not? It’s not like anyone is likely to miss him being around less, and he remembers that the only time he’d ever enjoyed the parties Julia and James used to throw were when someone decided to throw a poker game together.

Or, hilariously, one time almost everyone involved was too high to play anything but Go Fish. That particular incident was also the only time after grade school when Quentin’s card tricks actually got him applause. James still had footage of that on his computer somewhere, last Quentin knew. 

Parties are a Cottage thing but card games are not. So… what the hell. He should keep it in mind. 

<><><>

  
  


Classes begin again for the first-years on the following Monday, with yet another speech from Fogg in the lecture hall where the Beast broke in. The mirror’s gone, but when Quentin walks by the corner he sees there’s a shard still there by the wall. It makes his fingers itch and his spine crawl all at once, so he pretends to ignore it and sits as far away as possible. 

They have study groups now. And double the workload. Yay. 

Quentin briefly considers finding out who is in Alice’s study group and seeing if he can swap with one of them - there’s a part of him that wants to demand she look at him and stop acting like what happened to them is his fault, and forcing her to work with him will settle that instinct. But in the next moment he’s horrified that he even thought it. 

She needs space after what happened, and if they were both mind fucked into fucking, maybe it - maybe it’s worse for her. Quentin himself is only uneasy about what happened, but it could have hit Alice differently. He’s used to being vulnerable just because he’s so bad at putting up convincing defenses, but Alice locks out basically the whole world. 

Also, it’s not like him to force the issue like that. He doesn’t like the fact that part of him wants to so much. 

So instead he finds his study partners, Kit Chandler and Maureen Teagan. He was right about Kit’s name from when he saw her at South, which is nice to know. “Hang on, we’re still waiting,” Maureen says when Quentin joins them on the stairs outside. 

“I thought it was three to a group?” Quentin asks. There’d only been two names on his card. 

“I know, but no one says we can’t work together with other groups,” Maureen replies, very serene for a woman with green hair.

Quentin leans back against the rail, flipping his worry coin over and under his fingers while Kit and Maureen talk quietly. He’s just thinking it’s weird to see them without Maureen’s sister when he realizes who they must be waiting for, and sure enough a moment later Aislinn Teagan is leading the way out of the building with two other students at her heels. Quentin knows the other girl in passing because she’s another Cottage resident. Her name’s Maria, and she once dumped a bucket of ice on Todd’s head and thus earned herself one of Eliot’s most impressive cocktails. But Quentin has to admit he’s relieved when the third student is Gabriel.

“Help, we’re outnumbered,” Gabriel says to Quentin as the two groups meet, mock-alarmed as he waves at the four women surrounding them.

“Oh, hush, Gabe, you know you like it,” Aislinn drawls, sliding an arm around Kit’s waist as the six of them troop down the stairs. They make an interesting contrast, Quentin thinks, Kit small and dark-skinned, her many thin braids pulled together into a ponytail, while Aislinn is tall and pale, her blue hair cut short and sticking out at all angles like a slightly demented take on a pixie cut.

“Not since you broke my heart by playing exclusively for the other team, Linn,” Gabriel laughs, cutting into Quentin’s idle thoughts. “I guess I could try and win Maureen’s heart, but that seems like a losing battle.” 

“How do you all know each other?” That’s the last girl, Maria. “I mean, I sort of know Quentin because we live in the same house and he’s always with Margo and Eliot so people talk, and I’ve worked with Kit in class last semester and at South, but…” 

“We grew up together, more or less, us and Gabriel anyway,” Maureen says. Unlike her sister, her equally-quirky-colored hair is long, twisted back in a topknot that she’s stuck three pencils through. “Our families know each other.” 

“They broke my heart one summer, both of them, it was terribly unfair,” Gabriel jokes even as he falls into step next to Quentin, and his bright smile is for Maria at first, but then he turns it on Quentin and winks like they’re sharing a joke. It makes Quentin’s chest do something warm; he likes being in on things. He didn’t know that until he got to Brakebills, but he does now. “Hey, so, where exactly are we going?” 

“My room,” Kit says. “For botany and our star charts for astronomy, obviously we’ll have to work outside, but I have a lot of space so we can all fit there.”

“Aren’t you a knowledge kid?” Maria asks. “You live over the library, how much space can you have?” 

Kit shrugs. “According to Dean Fogg, there’s never that many knowledge students at a given time, so we get a little more space. Occasionally people have had to double up, a couple of the rooms have bunk beds. But it’s quiet and the library is right there, which will be useful. Also, knowledge kids are famous for experimentation, so there are extra wards on all the rooms for when spells go wrong.” 

“All the dorms have basic wards about that, but it’s no surprise knowledge kids need the strongest,” Gabriel says. “Good thinking.”

Quentin doesn’t say anything, just sort of lets the conversation wash over him. Kit turns out to have been more or less telling the truth about having space, though most of them end up on the floor. That’s not so bad - he tucks himself into a corner and he’s comfortable enough. Kit has star charts and a poster of a black hole on her wall, which is cool enough but not really Quentin’s thing. Then she shuts the door after the rest of them are all inside and on the door is a poster of -

“Is that the Wizard’s Oath? From the Young Wizards series?” he asks, and watches her light up.

“Yeah - don’t tell me, tried to take it when you were in middle school too?” Kit asks. 

“Twice, even,” Quentin admits, a little sheepish. “Hey, maybe it worked after all,” he adds with a little smile. 

“Oh no, we have nerds,” Aislinn laughs, but it sounds fond. It reminds him of the way Eliot usually calls him a nerd - and not the vaguely dismissive _they are nerds_ comment to Mike when - 

God, he is not going to let himself do this shit again. So instead he shrugs a little. “Guilty?” 

“Oh, we’re just as bad in our own way. Linn once got herself grounded for two months when she tried to use magic to create a lightsaber,” Maureen says lightly, and Aislinn throws a pillow at her sister’s head, declaring her a traitor. 

"Wait, did it work?" Maria asks. 

"No," Aislinn says, "but I can make lightsaber necklaces that will glow permanently, so I still count it as a win."

They settle down to start work on Runes after that, but as icebreakers go, Quentin decides it’s not a bad one. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The study group spends the first two weeks almost constantly together, and Quentin understands within two days why the study groups are mandatory for this semester. The workload is… definitely more than it used to be, by a lot. And they all have different skill sets, which means a lot of swapping tips for memorizing stuff. 

Quentin is slower than the rest of them in botany, even with Maria’s flash cards, for example, but he has a bunch of tricks for new language vocabulary. They don’t all have the same languages - Quentin went for Latin, which he half knows from high school, and Arabic, which he doesn’t know at all - but the tricks mostly hold. 

When he has to admit that he knows these methods from teaching himself Klingon and Vulcan, Kit shrugs and says, “Well, the premise is the same.” 

Kit is carrying all of them in astronomy/astrology, because the former was something she was already studying in college as part of an astrophysics degree, Maria has notes and study guide designs for everything, and as for the twins and Gabriel? Well, they’ve spent their entire lives around magic, and unlike Alice, their parents taught them a lot. Basically, between them they know at least a little about everything they’re learning. Including some alternate spells that are sometimes easier than the standard. 

“Technically homebrews, but old ones, so they’re trustworthy,” Aislinn says when Maria asks how reliable some of these spells are. 

And so two weeks in, they get to Friday and Gabriel turns to Quentin as they all leave Kit’s room. “Hey, we’ve got a game going over the weekend, you want in?” 

“I don’t know, maybe, gotta see what else might be going on. Margo’s back on Monday, God knows what schemes Eliot might rope me into,” Quentin says, and he doesn’t know why Gabriel looks a little disappointed but he tries not to dwell on it. Then, he finds himself on the Cottage porch with Alice. 

“Hey, how’s class going? And studying with Penny?” 

“It’s fine,” Alice says, not quite looking at him. 

_Neither of us smell like foxes anymore,_ Quentin wants to say, but he doesn’t. He can’t help but think that he’s the one who put the final nail in his relationship with Julia by pushing on the fact that he’d had a crush on her, she’d known about it, and pretended not to. Outside of when he’s in a temper, he knows full well that she was never obligated to date him, but it does still sting that they both know she knew, and most of those attempts to set him up were less about people he’d actually like and more about getting him over her. 

Which, to be fair, Julia had probably meant as a kinder way to reject him than actually saying so. 

The point is, he fucked up by crossing a line. He’s trying not to do that again. So he doesn’t say a word, and he ignores the odd twinge when it turns out Alice wasn’t going inside, she was waiting for Penny, and when he arrives she says a quick goodbye to Quentin before hurrying down to walk off with him. Quentin hears a bit of their conversation - something about how at least the Psychic dorm is quieter than the Cottage - before he goes inside. 

It’s not his business.

The next morning, he’s trying to practice some ink magic designs when Eliot pops up from nowhere, making Quentin jump so that his line slashes across the page. It’s a damn good thing he hasn’t progressed to skin, just ink on paper. That’s what the book says - start with pencil on paper, then ink on paper, then washable ink on skin. Once you’ve mastered that, try temporary tattoo methods like henna, then finally full-blown tattoos if you want. 

“This is a disaster!” Eliot says, waving around two… vests? Shirts? Quentin’s not sure which with them being brandished in his face like this. Eliot is still in one of his brightly printed pajama sets, and Quentin thinks it's a small mercy that he's not in one of those super-short robes of his.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have nothing to wear!”

Quentin is reasonably sure that is far from the truth, so he says, “You think that might be, I don’t know, hyperbole?” He’s tempted to say he thinks there might be department store sections that have fewer clothes than what’s in Eliot’s closet, but whatever Eliot’s on about, he seems honestly upset enough that Quentin doesn’t want to be too much of a dick. 

“I am not emotionally prepared for Mike to see me in repeat outfits.” 

Oh no. Quentin suddenly realizes what this is. This is a date outfit advice conversation. He hasn’t had to deal with these since he and Julia were seventeen and she finally figured out he was always going to be hopeless at giving her any help in this area. “I think this might be a Margo problem?” 

“Obviously, Quentin,” Eliot says impatiently, looking even more frazzled. “But she’s shacked up with some artiste at Encanto Oculto and so I’m stuck with you.” 

And - Quentin knows Eliot probably doesn’t mean that quite how it sounded. Sure, he’s been all honeymoon phase wrapped up with Mike, but that doesn’t mean he - he’s decided Quentin isn’t worth being friends with anymore. Still, it stings. People always end up stuck with Quentin, don’t they? So, while he could at least manage some kind of basic color observation - Julia taught him that much, colors and how to help her with her hair - all he says is, “Honestly, all vests look the same to me.” 

Eliot’s face hardens behind the frantic edge. “I made a horrible mistake asking you to help. Please leave.” 

“I was here first,” Quentin points out, and when Eliot just continues to stare at him like he can will Quentin to either be a less useless friend or to vanish, he continues, “I’ve never really seen you care about something.” 

“Things aren’t usually worth caring about.”

“With some limited, but very important exceptions,” Quentin says, stung again. It’s stupid, he knows it is, when he spent two days unable to sleep after the Web bullshit, only crashing out at last in Eliot’s room while listening to some completely improbable story about a party and a swimming pool full of champagne. But still, it manages to hurt.

“Very limited,” Eliot says, and his eyes are still frantic but his expression is at least trying to be that aloof mask Quentin hasn’t actually seen that much of since the very first day. 

“Please leave,” Eliot says again when Quentin says nothing, and Quentin scowls. 

“Like I said, I was here first. You leave,” he says, just bitter enough to say it. Eliot blinks, looking taken aback. 

“What? Are you pissed that I have a boyfriend too, just like Margo? You didn’t see me complain about you and Alice,” he asks, mouth twisting bitterly. 

And the thing is that Quentin is angry about it, in a way, but it’s the same way he resented James. So he knows it’s shitty, he knows he can’t let that bullshit get the better of him again. He already torpedoed his oldest friendship, he can’t afford to ruin this one. 

“Alice and I aren’t together,” is all he says instead, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around himself.

“Well, what do you expect from a lichen vodka hookup, Q? Is that why you’re being a bitch?” 

Quentin starts to snap back, but bites his tongue. He starts to confess that lichen vodka had nothing to do with it, but what’s the point? 

If - if Eliot is getting bored with him, and if he is Margo will too, then… Quentin will deal with that. He doesn’t think they’ll be cruel about it, not actively, which is better than a couple experiences he’s had. He’s been a shitty friend lately, first to Julia and then to Alice even if that wasn’t intentional. He should try harder for Eliot, right, even if things are drawing to an end? 

So he manages a half smile, shaking his head. “Eliot, no. You seem pretty happy, and that’s good, you deserve it.”

“Oh.” Eliot’s face softens briefly. "Margo wasn't too happy about it, I thought you were going the same way."

"No, that's not it," Quentin says, and it's mostly true. Even if it wasn't, talking about Margo's reaction seems to upset Eliot, so Quentin would have said it.

Eliot frowns then, looking puzzled. “Then why snap at me?” 

“Uh… Because I was literally here first? But, actually,” Quentin decides on a whim, “I have somewhere to be, so I’m gonna go after all.” The best way for him to stop being jealous, to stop being a little shit - even if only in his own head - is to distract himself until he wants different things.

“Wait, _you_ have somewhere to be? Where -” 

But Quentin is already halfway up the stairs to his room, because he needs his shoes. There’s a game running at the Castle, and there’s no reason he shouldn’t go. 

He isn’t jealous, exactly, not of Alice, and not of Eliot. Or so he tells himself. It’s just - it’s just starting to feel like everything he’d thought he found by coming here is slipping away. Except it isn’t, because he has magic. He has magic, and maybe he should just focus on that. 

And, he also has a friend. Who gave him an invitation.

It turns out that Gabriel is hanging out over by Woof Fountain, which at least means that Quentin doesn’t have to knock on the Castle door and awkwardly ask for him. “Hey, you said something about a game?” Quentin asks as he crosses the grass to reach him. 

“I did. Come on then,” Gabriel says with a wide grin.

Quentin’s seen the Castle, of course. Well, OK, not the Castle itself, because it’s invisible, but the spiral staircase that seems to disappear into thin air. It’s more than a little freaky to actually be going up the thing, but he mostly watches his feet and tries not to think about it too hard. 

Their views are worth it, though, holy shit. Once Gabriel opens up a trapdoor and Quentin follows him inside, the entrance hall actually has a wall that is entirely a window. From here, you can see the entire campus laid out, and Quentin pinpoints the Cottage before shaking his head and turning to follow Gabriel up still more stairs. 

Inside, the Castle actually does look like a castle, all sturdy stone walls incongruous with the modern decor inside them. He likes it, actually - it’s not like the Cottage, noisy and cozy all at once, and he hopes he won’t turn out to be an illusionist and have to live here, but it’s nice. Students are sprawled in beanbag chairs or sitting up at desks set up in the common room, posters on the wall particularly odd against the stone. 

That is also where the game table is - it’s a freaking round table like this place is supposed to be Camelot, and there’s already a couple people sitting there, one with his feet propped up on the table and his chair tipped back, since they’re not actually playing just now. 

“Hey guys,” Gabriel says. “This is Quentin, he’s a physical kid, we’re in the same study group. I taught him Push last day at South, he’s pretty good.” 

“The physical kids are shit compared to us,” says the guy Quentin noticed a moment before as he swings his legs back to the floor, chair thudding back onto all four legs. “But we’ll give you a try, kid. I’m Jake, dealer there is Chryssa.”

“Hi,” Quentin says, and takes his seat. 

It turns out that he can hold his own with the illusion kids after all. In fact, Quentin ends up spending the entire weekend at the Castle, going back to the Cottage only to sleep and clean up before heading back over again. Everything but the card playing is still, well, pretty awkward. But a lot of the time he’s at the Cottage he’s in his room or in the reading nook, at least these days. It’s nicer, he thinks, to have some degree of human interaction. And then he wonders when he became someone who wanted more human interaction.

He let himself get spoiled by having coffee with Alice, or the parties Eliot and Margo threw where he was allowed to tuck himself away in a corner as long as he showed up. They’d both come by to talk to him for at least part of the night. Occasionally they were the ones off to the side surveying their kingdom and they’d pull him down into the niche they’d claimed as their own. 

He let himself get spoiled, and now apparently he needs to be around people? So unfair. But with cards in his hands, he can sit in a room full of strangers and feel, if not relaxed, at least not out of place. He doesn’t even mind that people watch the games. 

And then there’s Gabriel. On Sunday afternoon, they break off from the main group to go up to Gabriel’s room. He has movie posters all over, and they sit on his bed, playing magical poker instead of Push just for fun. 

“You know, playing for candy is all well and good, but what if we up the stakes?” Gabriel asks, sucking on a lollipop he won in the last round. 

“Uh… to what, exactly? Because you just lost,” Quentin says, laying down his royal flush. 

“Ouch. Damn. Well…” Gabriel sets the lollipop aside, leans across the bed and kisses Quentin, soft and careful. Quentin opens for it more on instinct than anything else - he tastes like the lime of the candy. “Winner gets a kiss from the loser, to start?” he suggests, pulling back only enough to speak. 

“I - you - really?” Quentin says. 

Gabriel grins. “Are you so surprised? I mean, we can just keep playing for candy, it’s all right,” he says as he sits back. “But I thought you might want to know that it’s on offer, if you’re interested.”

Really, it’s no surprise that Quentin loses the next round spectacularly. When he does, he looks at the cards on the bedspread and takes a deep breath. He thinks of Alice at Brakebills South, and Eliot on the Brakebills sign. He thinks of stupid crushes that consistently never go anywhere, and the fact that for once someone decided to kiss him just because it seemed like fun. 

Then he leans over and kisses Gabriel, pulse racing. “Loser kisses the winner, right?” 


	2. You Needn't Look Too Far

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin has some questions; Eliot sees something unexpected; Margo comes home to find she has two boys now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope this chapter finds you well. 
> 
> Some warnings here - as noted by the tags there is voyeurism in this chapter that the people being watched did not consent to (although by having sex in a public space, they did know it was a possibility) and the viewer gets off from what he saw. Also discussion of Quentin's meds and depression, as well as Eliot's toxic home life - more about effects of the abuse than about the abuse itself. If I missed anything, let me know!
> 
> As ever, thanks to Maii for going over my drafts, and to my other enablers (especially Key and El).

“So, you really are kind of oblivious, aren’t you? I mean, you had no idea I thought you were cute?” Gabriel asks late on Sunday morning, stretching out in bed. His chest hair is a darker red than the hair on his head, and he’s very freckly; watching him sprawled out in bed, Quentin’s fingers itch to draw him. 

Maybe he will. Why not? 

“I mean, I guess so. I’ve been told I’m horrible at noticing when people are interested. Usually because I’m… mostly not?” Quentin answers thoughtfully, tucking an arm under his head and trying to be as unselfconscious as Gabriel is with the blankets down by their feet so they aren’t covering anything. “I’ve been told I need to get my head out of my books and my card tricks and pay attention to people.”

“I mean, you do read a lot,” Gabriel laughs. “I used to see you chilling with your books under that one tree near the center of campus, though not so much lately. Except that day after we got back from South, obviously.” 

“I was doing that half to avoid my roommate,” Quentin says, making a face. “We didn’t get along, at all, and it only got worse. But, yeah, between studying and reading for fun, I guess I do read a lot. But mostly… I’ve had one night stands and shit, they’re just not really… I don’t really get  _ into  _ people till I know them, and I don’t really know a lot of people so…” He doesn’t say that his one night stands were usually just a way to get himself out of his head for a while, and he can probably count on one hand the times he actually  _ wanted sex _ the way people usually talk about it. 

And one of those was with Alice, where magic sped up the timetable of feelings and interest he did have, just not at that level yet.

But that is deeply depressing pillow talk and might also send the wrong idea, because the truth is Gabriel is one of the people he can count on that one hand. He’s not in love with him but he  _ likes  _ him, and it’s nice to just  _ like  _ someone, and feel how liking leads to wanting them, without the weight of stronger feelings. Stronger feelings hurt even when they’re just crushes, in Quentin’s experience, so he’s perfectly willing to forego them for a while.

“Maybe I’m just picky?” he says instead, and Gabriel laughs. 

“Maybe. Though I’ve been told I’m hard to read, because I don’t do… romance and stuff. Just don’t feel it. I was kidding when I said Aislinn being gay broke my heart; it’s an old joke. But at the same time I agree with you — brief hookups would be easier for a guy like me, but they’re less fun. I like going to bed with people I can also talk to, like you and me are talking now. I’d say please don’t fall in love with me and ruin the fun but that would be really arrogant —” 

“I mean, yeah, a little,” Quentin agrees, making a face at him. “But it sounds like a fair deal to me.” The absolute last thing he needs in the world is to develop yet another crush, especially not on someone who’s just told him flat-out that anything more than friendship and sex is not on the table. Not that Quentin’s complaining — it’s kind of refreshing to know right away exactly where he stands. 

Most people want you to read their minds if you start having sex with them, which… might be a reason why Quentin’s taste for casual sex for its own sake — instead of as a way to get out of his own head — is usually nonexistent.

They do eventually go back down to play a few more rounds of cards. But Quentin falls asleep in Gabriel’s bed and only remembers when he wakes up on Monday morning that he doesn’t have any fresh clothes here. Which has him scrambling to get out and back over to the Cottage. 

“Next time, stick a change of clothes in your messenger bag?” suggests a half-asleep Gabriel. 

“Good plan, see you later,” Quentin says, yanking on his second shoe and hurrying out. Which is how he ends up in a walk of shame situation, slipping in through the kitchen and hoping -—

“Quentin! Where have you been, young man?” Margo, still dressed in beach clothes with her suitcase at her feet, can’t play the stern mother act for more than half a second before she starts cracking up. Quentin just sighs, even as he can feel the blush rising on his cheeks. 

“Illusionist Castle,” he says, not quite meeting her eyes. “Stayed too late after the card games.” 

Margo’s eyebrows shoot up. “You. Play at the Castle. Damn, Q, last time Eliot and I tried it we had to get across campus with only one shirt and pair of pants between us. Luckily, the shirt was El’s so it was long on me and we were able to charm my pants big enough for him to be semi-decent long enough to get back to the Cottage. But I would have thought they’re too rough for you.” 

Quentin only grins at her, with the confidence only the few things he knows he’s good at give him. “Come watch sometime,” he says.

Margo laughs. “I may have to do that. So… does ‘stayed too late’ have a name?”

“Gabriel,” Quentin says, ducking his head. “It’s nothing serious, but -— it’s fun.”

“Aw, baby’s growing up,” Margo teases, ruffling his hair. Quentin rolls his eyes, but the truth is, he likes it when Margo gives him that treatment. Something knotted up in Quentin’s chest eases; maybe he’d been worrying too much about if his friendships were going to hold?

“How was Ibiza?” he asks, deciding that since his first class isn’t for a couple hours yet — he’d realized halfway here he might have panicked earlier than necessary — he might as well have coffee first. He’d like one of the muffins in the bread box, but Maria tipped him off that they’re laced with… something from the Naturalist House, so he’ll steer clear.

So he brews coffee while Margo launches into stories of her vacation, ranging from the deeply explicit to the vaguely improbable. Sometimes both. “Maybe next year I’ll drag you along if El cocks out on me again,” she says as he hands her a mug of coffee. “Especially since you know how I take my coffee and you make it unfairly well. How do you know how I take my coffee?” 

“I’m not sure, actually,” Quentin admits, realizing as he says it that he also knows how Eliot takes his. He knows how Alice does too, but that’s because she drinks it black with a mountain of sugar. Hard to miss when sitting across from her. Margo and Eliot aren’t so simple — Margo, for example, takes milk rather than cream and honey instead of sugar. Eliot’s thing is cream and exactly three spoons of sugar. 

Quentin does not remember when he learned this, only that he did somehow. Then again, he does eat breakfast — brunch, really — with Eliot and Margo a lot on the weekends in particular, at least till recently, so it must have been then.

“Hm. Maybe we’ll both take you, you can be in charge of keeping us all energized with caffeine and we’ll make sure you’re a very  _ pretty  _ coffee boy,” Margo says slyly, and Quentin can feel himself blushing. Again.

“Uh… Why don’t we revisit that concept next year?” he says even as Margo laughs at his blush. But it’s — the last time Margo laughed at him was during the Trials, and it had stung because it really  _ was  _ mockery. From her and from Eliot. But this is the fond laughter he’d grown used to, that part of him had been wondering was still real — and it wasn’t just because of Eliot’s new relationship energy, he realizes suddenly, it’s been a doubt growing since the Trials. 

Maybe he’d taken a performance too personally?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Margo had hoped that when she came back from Ibiza, things would be back to normal. Quentin shattered that the second he came in through the back door, rumpled with a faint red mark showing just a little over his shirt collar. She is more than a little amused by the fact that their little nerd is walk of shaming it back from the Illusionist Castle, especially since this proves her right about Q being bisexual. 

Eliot insisted the boy was straight, as if any straight boy sits like that… or would have spent so much time staring at Eliot like that.

So how can she use this? By Q’s own admission, this Gabriel is a casual hookup, which shouldn’t be too hard to break up. At this point, the question is… “Is Eliot still screwing that Mike guy?” she asks Quentin, who frowns into his coffee cup before turning a much less grumpy face to her. 

“Yeah, he seems to really like him. He… Eliot said you didn’t, really?” 

“Fuck no,” Margo says. “Can’t put my finger on why but something about him…” 

“He drinks beer, and Eliot doesn’t seem to mind,” Quentin says a little abruptly, and Margo has to hide a smirk in her own coffee cup. Someone’s seeing the little green monster, isn’t he, even in spite of the illusionist fuck buddy. Excellent — if she can figure out what to do with it. 

She’s not sure what it is about Mike that she doesn’t like. Margo is usually pretty honest with herself, so she knows some of it is just jealousy. That within days Eliot was throwing over their Ibiza plans for this guy. She’d never admit it out loud, not even to Eliot, but it’s the truth. It’s supposed to be the two of them against the world, and she’s willing to make an exception or two — as in the case of a certain floppy-haired nerd — but not for someone who comes barreling in and fucks them up. 

Which is exactly what Mike did, whatever Eliot says about wanting him to be  _ with us _ . Margo knows  _ with us  _ — that’s what they do with Quentin— what she’d have been willing to consider doing with Alice Quinn, if Alice had been just a little less prickly. So, yeah, Margo’s jealous, and annoyed. But there’s something else too when she thinks of Mike smiling at Eliot, something that puts a shiver down her spine, some kind of strange _ deja vu _ that makes her want to freeze Mike McCormick in a block of ice.

She can’t put her finger on it, and isn’t really that fussed to try. Her instincts are usually good ones, and they are screaming that Mike is trouble. So when Quentin waves a little awkwardly and heads for the stairs, Margo watches him go and thinks. Eliot hadn’t exactly been pining when it came to Quentin, or anything like that, not in any kind of way that stopped him from finding pretty boys for a one-nighter, but he’d been…  _ attached _ . 

Maybe there’s something she can work with there.

“Bambi!” 

They hug like they did before she left, a hug that turns halfway into a dance move, Eliot spinning them and Margo leaning back to look at him. He looks good, damn it, he looks happy, and she suddenly feels guilty about her half-considered scheming. Maybe she can tolerate Mike, at least for now? 

“So, how was Ibiza?” Eliot asks as he makes his own coffee and hooks an arm around her waist so he can guide them over to their favorite window seat. Margo settles in against him there and tries to tell herself that maybe nothing has really changed after all.

“I won’t be taking Todd again, though now he can take himself,” Margo says, and shit, she had not thought of that.

“Speaking of, you didn’t actually…?” 

“No, I did. Once. Maybe twice, I think he was there in one of the group experiences but I was seeing literal stars off this purple cake they had so I really can’t be sure. He wasn’t bad. Not worth the effort to train up from decent to good, but better than expected.” That’s actually true; the thing that had really put Margo off ever hooking up with Todd again is the fact that she’s always thought of him as a knockoff wannabe Eliot, and something about screwing him hit her brain weird. 

What kind of weird she’s not sure, just… weird.

“Hm,” Eliot says, unconvinced. Margo tips her head back to look at him and he’s leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed. “Tell me there was better talent available.” 

“God yes, there was,” Margo laughs, and proceeds to tell him about the gorgeous couple she’d spent long hours with, fucking on the one beach in the world that won’t leave you with sand in uncomfortable places. “You missed a great time, babe.” 

“I’m sure, but I had my own kind of fun,” Eliot says airily. Then he opens his eyes, looking down at her more seriously. “I know you don’t like him much. I don’t exactly understand  _ why _ , but I know you don’t.”

“Maybe he reminds me of an ex from high school or some shit, I’m not totally sure either,” Margo says, deciding to be honest. “Just rubbed me wrong from your initial meet-cute moment. Be careful, OK? Don’t fall too fast, you barely know the guy.” 

“Little late, I think,” Eliot says with a lopsided smile. “I… told him about Indiana. That I was from there, not the other shit. I just… he was worried about being from Texas and how he’s not cultured like I am. He looked so unsure. I wanted to make him feel better.” 

Margo has heard this before. Actually, she’s heard almost exactly this before from Eliot, about Quentin. 

_ “I told him about Logan, Margo. He just looked so scared and I wanted to make him feel better.”  _

She doesn’t like this. She doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t like this. There’d been a moment during Encanto Oculto when she’d eaten this green candy that’s supposed to make you “dream of time,” or so the guy who gave it to her claimed. She’d woken up with her feet in the surf, blinking up at the Spanish stars, and her lingering anger at Eliot had been gone, replaced by the inexplicable worry. 

But she can’t tell Eliot that, can she? 

“I’ll make an effort. For  _ your  _ sake,” she says instead, leaning up to kiss Eliot’s cheek. “God knows you have exacting tastes, the guy must have some kind of redeeming factor.” Or absolutely none at all, but if he doesn’t, then she’ll need to be close to know what to do, won’t she? 

And maybe she won’t completely retire the idea of upping the nerd’s chances. If nothing else, she might feel less third wheel-ish if they tow another friend along for the ride. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot is not upset that Mike couldn’t make it to the party he throws on Margo’s first weekend back. That would be ridiculous. Besides, Mike is older, it’s reasonable that sometimes he’d have work to do, even on the weekend. He did say he’s working on a major project for his job, so Eliot shouldn’t even be surprised really.

Yes, he’d kind of wanted to show off a little, and more importantly he’d been hoping that Mike and Margo could have a fresh start. They need it, and Margo promised she’d make an effort. It’ll be easier if they start in a setting she likes, and a party is also good because there’s other people around if you need to take a break from who you’re with. 

Speaking of other people, maybe Eliot had even been hoping to go find Quentin too and get all the people he likes in various ways to like each other, at least a little. 

But it’s not like there won’t be other parties. There are always parties here. So he tells himself it would be silly to be out of sorts, and stations himself behind the bar, idly looking around the room between cocktail making. The familiar motions, the ideas for new mixes that he can then hand off to unsuspecting people, are soothing, and though he’ll never admit to needing that, he kind of does. 

The people watching is, as usual, entertaining. 

Everyone knows that the Cottage is the place to be for parties, and that the Illusionist Castle plays host to Brakebills’ Push-and-poker circuit. Eliot tried the Castle a few times, and he can play Muggles pretty well but cards against fellow magicians, not so easy. He’s more a pool guy than a cards one anyway, and while he’s been known to be a bit of a pool shark, the card sharks at the Castle are too much for him. 

Still, occasionally these things cross, and when Eliot leaves the bar to go have a cigarette, he catches sight of a few illusionists and… he thinks that’s a healer kid, though he’s not sure, who have set up a game. The healer kid gets his ass handed to him, and so do a few Cottage kids. This is why Eliot doesn’t play with the illusionists or their regular visitors from the other dorms anymore; it would just hurt his reputation. 

He recognizes Chryssa, of course — she and Margo have a long-running queen vs queen rivalry that occasionally ends with them in bed together — but he doesn’t know the others. One of them’s a hot redheaded guy he might have considered making a move on if this were a couple months ago, but… 

“Hey! Coldwater! Get over here, we’re on your turf, shouldn’t you defend the physical kids’ honor? We just kicked some pyro’s ass!” said redhead calls out, having spotted Quentin on the stairs, and Eliot raises his eyebrows. Sure, Quentin’s good at card tricks, but he doesn’t have anything approaching a poker face. But Red is talking to Q like he knows him, which… 

“Are you seriously putting the honor of an entire section of Brakebills on my head, Gabriel?” Quentin asks as he drops into one of the empty chairs. “Not fair, but deal me in anyway,” he says, slipping the black band off his wrist and tying back his hair. 

What happens next is —  _ unexpected _ , to say the least. Eliot eases into the shadow by the stairs, leaning against the wall to watch. Over at the card table, Quentin is entirely relaxed in a way Eliot’s not sure he’s ever seen before. He watches, half-thinking he might need to swoop in and rescue his little nerd when it turns out this is too much for him, only —

Quentin is an open book. An entirely,  _ completely  _ open book. Except, apparently, with cards in his hand. His face goes calm and intent, he’s casting probability magic like Eliot didn’t watch him struggle with Popper 41 for a good two days before he stepped in to help. This Quentin is all intense confidence and a sharp smile when he wins one round, then two, and Jesus, he’s adorable when he’s rambling and Eliot’s suppressed quite a few ideas around watching Quentin bite his lip when he’s nervous, but this is —

He has a boyfriend. His friend is cute but he’s a straight boy, and Eliot likes him too much to chase him off. But damn, he needs to tell Margo about this. If they can get their boy to bring this side out for more than card games, they can have even more fun with him as long as he’s still their fumbly nerd sometimes. 

He tells himself he’s not thinking about anything else. He tells himself he’s just enjoying watching Quentin kick all the others’ asses at Push because, well, that’s  _ his  _ boy, ‘defending the Cottage’s honor’ or whatever the fuck it was Red said to bring him in. Eliot’s very proud of him, and he’ll tell him so after the party. 

For now, he eases back around the corner and goes back to the bar, and if his pants are pinching slightly, well, that happens sometimes with fits this tight.

Later, Eliot is settled again as the party starts to wind down a little. The early birds crashing out, mostly. So he takes a break, wandering through the Cottage. He spots Margo with a psychic he vaguely knows from one of his classes making out on the couch, which, good for her. He’ll have to ask about it later. 

He thinks the room he’s walking by is empty until he hears a low moan. Politeness would say Eliot should just move on, but he thinks he hears a familiar laugh, which — nah. There’s no way. But he steps closer, light on his feet until he catches sight of — oh, it’s Red, leaning against the wall with his head tipped back. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you like losing more than — oh fuck, Jesus, don’t stop doing that.”

Another step forward and he can see the profile of the person Red’s with, and —. 

_ Jesus Christ. _

That —that is  _ Quentin _ , mouthing at the bulge in this other guy’s pants, his hands curved round his waist, sliding up under his shirt. It’s Quentin leaning back with a soft huffing laugh so he can undo Red’s pants, not even pushing them down before he’s leaning in, licking at the tip of that bastard illusionist’s cock before just — fucking taking him in. 

Eliot watches Quentin’s throat work as he swallows around Red’s cock, face hidden by the open edge of the other man’s pants. But Eliot can tell from the angle that Quentin’s lips are wrapped around the base of him and that is just — Eliot is hard in his suddenly too-tight pants, his mouth is dry, and he’s confused as much as turned on because he’d thought Quentin was straight, the way he stared after Alice and his crush on that hedge bitch ex-best friend of his. 

But no straight boy sucks cock like that, he thinks dizzily as he watches Quentin draw back a little, probably so that he can use his tongue from the way Red moans. Quentin hollows his cheeks, sliding a hand up probably to play with Red’s balls, though Eliot can’t actually see that, then he pulls off again, free hand tugging his hair loose. “Come on, don’t be polite, Gabe,” he says, voice already hoarse. 

“Oh, well —” And  _ Gabe’s _ hands twine in Quentin’s hair when he lowers his head again, his hips rolling so that he’s fucking Quentin’s mouth, and Quentin fucking moans for him like he loves it, the sound muffled but —

Eliot squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself back out of the room again. He’d meant to go back to the bar, but fuck it, people can make their own goddamn drinks, he  _ needs  _ a fucking drink but that is what his flask is for. He fumbles for it even as he climbs the stairs, pausing to lean against the banister and take a long pull from it. His hands are shaking, what the hell. This is ridiculous, it’s far from the first time Eliot has ended up an accidental voyeur — the Cottage parties are famous for more than one reason, and one of those reasons is that sometimes the hookups are very public.

Also, Encanto Oculto. The point is, he’s not new to this experience, and yet...

Eliot slams the door to his room closed and slumps back against it, tucking his flask back into his pocket and rubbing his hands over his face. “Fuck,” he says, and then he gives up and undoes his pants, flicking one hand in the tuts to slick his fingers before wrapping them around his own cock. 

It doesn’t take long, only a few rough strokes, trying desperately to think of nothing at all. But of course, all he can see behind his closed eyes is Quentin’s sharp smile at the card table, hands in Quentin’s hair that _ aren’t Eliot’s _ because he’s on his knees for a different guy. What he must have looked like, what he would look like between Eliot’s legs, oh  _ fuck  _ — 

And then Eliot’s coming over his own hand with a low groan, still leaning back against his own door like a teenager too horny to wait. He lifts a tissue with his telekinesis to clean his hand off, then goes over to sprawl on his bed, scowling up at the ceiling. Well, that didn’t help anything but his erection, certainly didn’t improve his mood. He should probably feel guilty thinking about Quentin instead of Mike, his boyfriend, but he thinks he can be forgiven in the shock of it. Not that he’s going to tell.

Especially because he kind of wants to punch something, which is stupid. It’s so fucking stupid, he has a boyfriend and Quentin is his friend but they’ve never been anything more. Eliot hadn’t been subtle, he’d literally offered to seduce Quentin once already, if Quentin likes guys why the hell hadn’t he come to Eliot? Why was he sucking off Redheaded Illusionist instead? How long has that been going on anyway? He’d been so sure Quentin was panting after Alice, had he misread a friendship between them so he wouldn’t see that Quentin just… didn’t want him? 

No, no, he’s almost certain he’s not that bad at observation. Maybe it’s his fault. He’d backed off a little when he realized he  _ liked  _ Quentin, actually wanted to keep him around, and maybe he’d sent the wrong signals. Or maybe Quentin just didn’t want him, like he’s already thought, and wouldn’t have been interested regardless of the signals Eliot was sending.

“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” he announces to the empty room. He has to believe that, doesn’t he? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin starts the week feeling oddly buzzed from the weekend — the winner/loser game with Gabriel taking on an almost-exhibitionist edge on Saturday night had been more of a thrill than he’d realized. And on Sunday he’d spent most of the day with Eliot and Margo — Mike’s out of town and Margo’s back so Eliot stuck around for the weekend, and it had felt like pre-South times. Quentin and Margo had even convinced Eliot to watch the second Hobbit movie on the grounds that he would appreciate Thranduil. Which he had, in fact. 

So a normal weekend by Brakebills standards.

Except for how every now and then Quentin would catch Eliot eyeing him strangely, and he’d been less… touchy than usual. With Quentin, not with Margo. But nothing else had been different, so Quentin’s fairly sure nothing’s wrong. At least he hopes not. He’d asked Margo when Eliot stepped away for a moment and she’d shrugged and said Eliot was just in a weird mood, it wasn’t bad for him or anything. And as far as he can tell, Margo’s never actually lied to him. 

She’s roofied him, but never lied. 

That sounds wrong somehow, but outside of Trials he more or less trusts her. He just can’t help fretting a little. And so he’s buzzed, mostly from good things but a little from worry too. It would be nice, just once, to be worked up only from good things. 

“God, you two have really loud thoughts,” Aislinn says to Quentin and Maria at lunch — Maureen, Gabriel, and Kit have a different free period for lunch, and on Mondays Quentin always used to find himself alone because no one’s schedule matched up. It’s nice, even when it leads to comments on his inadequacies. At least he’s not alone? 

“I tried doing the shielding exercises they teach first semester, they just don’t work very well, I can feel them leaking,” Maria says with a sigh. 

“I can’t even feel that, they just don’t work,” Quentin says, making a face.

“Well, that’s because both of you are object-based physicals,” Aislinn says like that’s obvious, and given she’s a telepath who was raised with magic, maybe it is to her. “The elemental-based and energy-based physicals are hit or miss with the kind of shielding Brakebills teaches, and nearly all the Naturalists can’t do that shield style at all, but they teach each other at their dorm once they get there, but really they should pull all the Physical and Naturalist students into different shield training.” 

“I’m not an object-based physical,” Quentin says reluctantly. “I’m undetermined, the Cottage just had room.” 

“What’s your best stuff, though?” Aislinn asks. 

“Minor mendings, summoning objects, and minor transmutations.” Transmutation is what their generation of Harry Potter readers would probably call transfiguration, and actually Professor Milinovik ranted multiple times about that, but half the school still calls it transfiguration. It’s turning things into other things, or in the case of minor transmutation, altering things. Like taking plain silverware and turning it fancy, or changing the color of something. 

“You were second only to me in that class, and transmutation is my discipline,” Maria points out. “You probably can’t do the big projects they’re starting to push me into already, but your detail work was excellent.”

“So, something object-based, just not specific yet,” Aislinn says. “It happens. Disciplines are who we are in certain key ways, and not everyone starts their training settled enough in themselves for the tests to show it. Brakebills is just made up of a bunch of academic snobs in their ivory tower, so they don’t think all that creatively. Which is why the shielding problem, among others. They told you to do the whole visualizing a door, right, and locking it? Or picture a wall made of the strongest material you can think of?”

Quentin and Maria both nod, and Aislinn rolls her eyes. “Come on, we can take our food to my room. I’m not bothered by your thoughts — psychic disciplines start early, I’ve been tuning out ever-louder echoes of people’s thoughts since I was seven — but I can’t in good conscience just let you keep going around with your heads leaking.” 

Aislinn runs them through meditation first; breathe in for a count of seven, hold for a count of seven, breathe out for a count of seven. They do that for a while, until Quentin finds himself almost drifting in it, aware of himself in a way he almost never is. The sound of his breath, the faint ache on his thigh where Gabriel left a mark when he lost a round of poker, the weight of his two shirts and the softness of his worn jeans. There’s a faint scent in the air, not the musky incense of the psychic dorms in general but a lighter, softer spice, and when Quentin opens his eyes he realizes Aislinn lit a candle. 

“Now, if you were psychics taught like I was, the next mental exercise would be to draw yourself in, imagine fitting yourself into something small. I’m told that non-psychics also find it useful for getting a better grip on magic, but I don’t know for sure.” 

Quentin files that knowledge away to try later, because it can’t hurt. The idea that he might really belong in the Cottage, that he won’t have to leave… Well. 

“Today, though, you need to picture something else. Not a wall, not a door, but memories. Your safest memories.” 

And that is — that’s him and Julia under the table where they drew their Fillory map or tucked away in the hollow in the honeysuckle bush in his backyard, it’s his dad showing him the seawall down at the shore, a place away from the boardwalk and the more crowded part of the beach so that it’s almost nothing but sea and sky and wind, and his dad’s hand on his shoulder. 

It’s that day behind the Cottage when he hadn’t been expelled after all, when he’d seen Eliot and Margo calling him over and known he really was stepping into a new life. 

He loses the breathing pattern for a moment, has to catch his breath and press his hands to stinging eyes, because for a moment it’s all just too much. Because he and Julia are done and his dad is dying and he has no way to know if he means as much to Eliot and Margo as he’s realizing they mean to him, and —

He takes a deep breath, and finds the pattern again, grateful that Aislinn didn’t ask him what was wrong. “Now, picture a small safe place for yourself, a sanctuary. Somewhere real. Imagine all that safety sinking into its walls, its floors, every bit of it, until it glows. And that’s where you are. Your thoughts and your memories, your very self, surrounded by everything that means safety to you.”

The reading nook in the Cottage, Quentin decides. He pictures himself lying in there and his memories like soap bubbles — that trippy Cinderella scene, maybe, only each bubble holds a different memory.

“Do that every night before you go to bed, and do this tut with it,” Aislinn says, and when Quentin and Maria open their eyes she does a fairly simple tut, her palms pressed together and her fingers laying on the opposite wrist, then she turns them 180 degrees.

“Why does that work? It’s so much more visualization,” Maria says as she rolls her neck to get out the kinks. 

“Naturalists and object-based physicals are more part of the world than psychics or knowledge or illusionists. And like I said, the other two types of physicals, it varies,” Aislinn says. “Your discipline really is part of you, and people whose magic runs through solid things… They need something solid, something real, to anchor them. Making up a wall or a locked room that doesn’t exist is just a figment of imagination, it’s not solid enough for you.”

“That kind of makes sense,” Quentin says thoughtfully. “It’s why I like card magic, or the ink magic I’ve been reading about. You can see what you’re doing, you can touch a card as you change it. I know what being safe feels like, so I can use that feeling to create safety in my head.” 

“Basically, yeah.” 

“And now we have to run or we’ll be late for Botany,” Maria points out. 

In the scramble to get out of Aislinn’s room, Quentin spots a pill bottle on her dresser. He recognizes the prescription name — it’s an anti-anxiety medication he had to stop taking because he was allergic to something in it. Only a mild allergy, but still not safe. 

But if magic fixes depression, shouldn’t it do the same for anxiety?

There’s no time to ask, and much as he likes Aislinn, much as he was willing to let her show him how to protect his mind, he’s not sure he’s comfortable discussing psych meds with her. Hers or his, frankly. 

So Quentin spends what free time he has over the next two weeks in the Brakebills library Free time, in this case, means time not filled by class, the study group, Gabriel, or Eliot and Margo. Which is more time than it sounds like, but still, Quentin’s startled by how much of his life now is filled with other people, and how much he’s actually enjoying it. He still isn’t seeing much of Alice — and when he does see her around, she and Penny are usually together — but the sting of that eases every day and he’s grateful for it.

In his research, he’s trying to find anything on lack of magic causing false diagnoses of mental illness, and he does find a little, but it's always psychics of some kind, usually being diagnosed with schizophrenia. Other things too, less often, but the only non-psychic ability that comes up is the discipline of Animal Communication.

That's technically a naturalist discipline but the footnote on that directs him to a book on disciplines that explains it's only naturalist because it doesn't work on people. There are other disciplines that are less than purely one or the other — after his conversation with Aislinn and Maria Quentin can't help but note that mending disciplines are physical, but considered to have an element of time magic. The same is true of the majority of healing magic, even though healing is its own discipline and time magic comes under knowledge.

The book does say that there are a few disciplines that can cause mental illness if you're not properly trained, mostly knowledge people who are exposed to magic and then cut off.

But Quentin can't find anything, in any of the books, that suggests Fogg's words were true. 

_ "You haven't been depressed, Quentin, you've been angry." _

_ "Out there, everyone medicates. Here, we hope you won't have to." _

Quentin even tries to find out if maybe the real issue was his meds, if they somehow make it harder to do magic the way some meds have weird side effects. But he can’t find anything on that either.

He thinks about asking Gabriel after he gives up on the books, lying in bed on a Saturday morning, but he's distracted by the howling wolf tattooed on his inner left forearm. He's seen it before, obviously, but this time when his fingers brush it he feels a spark of power.

Maybe it's from the symbol he drew in marker on his ankle, his first ink magic on his skin. All it's for is to make him 'see more clearly' but… "Is there a spell on your wolf?" he asks, turning his head to kiss the ink. He feels the spark then too, and it's kind of a thrill.

"Yeah, there's magic in the ink, old family stuff. Hey, I bet I can cast that invisibility charm faster than you can. I could do all kinds of things if I was invisible."

The idea of what they could do if they're invisible is even more distracting, and in the end Gabriel is in the same box as Aislinn. Quentin likes him, but doesn't feel comfortable discussing this.

In the end, there's only one person he feels he can ask, someone who already knows he's fucked up and didn't offer judgment. Only kindness, a joke about seduction to cheer him up, and before that a confidence every bit as heavy as Quentin's own. 

Eliot’s been a little weird for the past couple of weeks — a little less caught up in new relationship energy and so friendly enough that Quentin knows his fears about Eliot and Margo getting bored were unfounded, but still…  _ odd _ . Less touchy-feely, which might be a relationship thing or might be something else. But in spite of that strangeness, the truth really is that Quentin doesn’t feel comfortable asking anyone else. Eliot might not know either, but he might know who to ask if he doesn’t. Either way, he won’t judge Quentin for it.

Of course, it's the weekend, so Eliot is in New York at Mike’s place again. Margo's with them today — she told Quentin that her plan was to “make nice at brunch and then reward myself with a shopping spree and a spa overnight.”

So he'll have to wait.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“Um, Eliot, can I talk to you?” 

Eliot, sitting in his favorite spot on the window seat, turns his head to look at Quentin. “You don’t usually ask, Q,” he says, drawing his legs up a little in a silent invitation. Quentin wouldn’t always have picked up on it, but he seems to have learned by now because he perches in the space Eliot made, fidgeting with the hem of his zip-up jacket. Eliot watches him, waiting for Quentin to find his words. It’s actually a relief in a way — they aren’t quite touching but he can’t help being aware that this is the closest they’ve been since he saw Quentin with the redhead two weeks ago. He’s been careful with Quentin since then, trying to avoid touching him too much, not sure what he’d be tempted to do if he did.

It’s a new problem for Eliot — not being attracted to a friend, he’s been there and done that, most recently with Quentin for all of their friendship till now. But having a steady boyfriend who he really, really likes, might even fall wholly in love with if they have the time for that to grow, but he literally got off to the memory of seeing his friend going down on someone else. And not just the one time. 

He’s dreamed about it, and just because a few of the dreams had also involved Mike, Eliot can’t help uneasily wondering if this is some kind of emotional cheating or what. Funny, it never bothered him to seduce other people’s boyfriends before, but now… 

Eliot doesn’t know what to do with this, it’s never happened before. Most of his friend-crushes never went anywhere, they’d been a maudlin indulgence until he shook them off. Mostly he hooked up with people he didn’t care about. There’s Margo, but she’s…  _ different _ . Different because mostly they were more sharing a boy than touching each other, different because as a rule girls aren’t really his thing so even the few times they actually had sex together were as much about just another way of  _ being them _ than anything else. Wonderful in a unique way but not one he can exactly put words to. 

He’s never had to, and he still doesn’t, but the thing is that this, now, dating Mike but now painfully aware that Quentin isn’t the off-limits straight boy Eliot had believed… He really wishes he had been in this situation before because he doesn’t have a fucking clue what to do with it and he could use a road map. 

Then Quentin finds his words, and Eliot completely forgets his own concerns for now. 

“So, um, I told you about being hospitalized, that I was literally just out of the hospital for like a day when I showed up at Brakebills. But I, I didn’t — after I did magic for Fogg, actually after he yelled at me until I made cards move in a cloud and then settle into a house, when he had me sign the waiver…” Quentin pauses, running a hand through his hair. “He told me that I hadn’t been depressed, I was angry because, um, because I knew on some level that magic was real but couldn’t access it. He told me that at Brakebills, they hoped I wouldn’t need my meds. So… I gave them to him.”

Eliot’s blood runs cold, because one of the first things Quentin told him was that he’d been hospitalized right before Brakebills, and you don’t just — take meds from someone who just got out of any kind of hospital, that’s a terrible fucking idea. “Did he ask for them?” 

“Not outright, it was… implied, but he took them without a word. The, the thing is, one of the people in my study group still takes anti-anxiety medication. I saw it on her dresser.” 

“When was this?” Eliot asks, not because it matters, exactly, but more because it buys him time to figure out what to say. 

“Two weeks ago. I’ve been spending my free periods in the library trying to find information since then but all I can find is that for certain disciplines incomplete magical training can cause mental problems, and that some psychic abilities are misdiagnosed as mental illness. Nothing about general stuff like Fogg was talking about.” 

Eliot nods, and then gets to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go to your room — I don’t think you want to have this conversation in the middle of the common area.” 

Quentin’s expression says that he already suspects what Eliot is going to tell him, just from that, but he doesn’t argue. So they make their way upstairs and Eliot tries to figure out what to say. Normally, he’d be blunt, because this is dangerous, but he can’t help remembering Quentin when he’d almost been expelled. How desperate he’d been, how convinced that magic was his saving grace, that he was doomed without it.

Even after Eliot told him magic comes from pain, and in hindsight he probably should have elaborated on that point, because it’s true enough but when paired with being told to give up psych meds it takes on a meaning that is both incorrect and risky as all hell.

But how to explain that without crushing the boy who pinned all his hopes on magic saving him?

They get to Quentin’s room and Eliot sits in the chair by the little desk space built into the wall, while Quentin curls in one of his pretzel poses on the side of the bed.

“You know how I was so disdainful of hedges?” Eliot starts and Quentin nods, looking puzzled. But Eliot is getting to his point. “It’s because before Brakebills, I interacted with a lot of them. I was fourteen when my magic manifested; there wasn’t any other option. I’m telling you this to be more credible when I say, outside of certain psychic disciplines, magic does not cause a misdiagnosis.” 

“So I’m fucked,” Quentin says, flopping back on the bed. “Magic can’t fix me, nothing can, can it? God, I should have realized when magic couldn’t cure cancer, or fix Fogg’s eyes, but I - I - that doctor said there’s a theory cancer is caused by a curse, and Fogg lost his eyes in a magical attack. I thought that was the difference, and now…” 

“Magic can help,” Eliot says carefully. To hell with his caution, the only way he knows to try and comfort is with touch, so he moves to sit next to Quentin, stroking a hand over his hair. Quentin stares up at him, looking lost. Fuck, he is not good at this, but no one else is here. Quentin came to  _ him  _ with this, trusted  _ him  _ for some reason Eliot can’t begin to guess. “There’s potions that help ease the side effects meds can have, so if they work they aren’t kicking your ass at the same time. There’s also one, if things are bad, that won’t  _ allow you _ to harm yourself when it’s in your system.”

“But it can’t fix it,” Quentin says, and he doesn’t look any happier but he’s leaning into Eliot’s hand like a cat might at being petted. “It was stupid to think that, wasn’t it?” 

“No,” Eliot says, still doing his best to be careful. “I don’t think so. Most people, they come to Brakebills and unless they’re from magical families or early bloomers like I was, their only concept of magic is the fictional version. Thanks to Bambi and now you, I can’t completely escape the fantasy you two nerds love so much.” The mild jab gets Eliot a tiny smile from Quentin, which is what he wanted. “My point is, from what I’ve noticed, magic in the stories is usually fixing shit left, right, and center. Who wouldn’t think that was the real story, just starting?” 

“But why would he tell me any of that, if it’s not true?” Quentin says, looking less stricken at last and now more puzzled. “Do — you said before that magic comes from pain, and Margo said that the best way to get the things you want is to be so miserable you don’t want them anymore. Will my magic be stronger if my depression goes untreated? I was able to cast that storm spell in the Welters game because I was upset about my dad.” 

“Was it because you were upset or was it because being upset made you so indifferent to the game that you got out of your own way instead of worrying?” Eliot asks, delaying while he tries to figure out how to explain that he’d meant what he said, but not exactly how Quentin had taken it. 

“Not sure,” Quentin admits. “Gabriel and Aislinn think a lot of my issues in class are overthinking things, though.” 

Eliot ignores the faint spurt of jealousy — he knows now that Gabriel is the redhead, and also that Quentin spends extra time with Aislinn working on his mental shielding, and being jealous of either of them is stupid. Also not helpful right now. “They might be right, but… Look, I can’t speak for Bambi and why she put it like she did. We think alike in a lot of ways, but not  _ identically _ . What I meant was more… You know those stories about tiny old grandmas lifting cars to save their trapped grandkids, things like that?” 

Quentin nods. “Yeah, sure. Adrenaline lets us do stuff we don’t usually because even though we’re technically capable of it, we know it’ll damage us to do so we don’t.”

“Right. Magic’s a little bit like that. Strong emotions open us up to it, but the kind of emotions most likely to trigger power are negative ones.” Eliot hadn’t learned this at Brakebills, but as a frightened teenager using AOL Messenger with a hedge named Merry he met on a LiveJournal blog, only able to get away with it because his parents were bad at figuring out the computer enough to spy, and as for his brothers, well. Eliot hated Andrew for being as cruel as their father and William for pretending he saw nothing just like their mother. Patrick, even younger than him, Eliot never hated, but Patrick was always… quiet and easy to ignore, somehow unknowable even when they were children. 

That being said, they all had just enough dirt on each other in a few areas not to tell on each other, because even Andrew feared their father as much as he idolized and copied him, and one of the things Eliot had managed to secure for himself with a mix of blackmail and learning quickly how to cover his tracks was Internet safety. It had been a lifesaver when he was a confused kid trying to control his magic before he killed someone else.

He has his issues with hedges, but a few of them had helped him a lot, once upon a time. Can’t trust the covens, especially not in New York where word is the queen hedge is a ruthless sadist, but some individual hedges aren’t as bad as he told Quentin that day they went book-hunting. 

He shakes off the memories and continues. “Anger, fear, grief, they set it off best. Magic comes from pain. And it can push you in an extreme situation because magic’s like any other ability that way.”

“So… magic doesn’t need pain like firewood or something, it’s more like the start of a domino effect.” 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Eliot says. 

“Shit,” Quentin sighs. “My next bottle came to my dad’s place — Midtown Clinic gave me a starter bottle which is what I gave Fogg. But when I went to see him I got rid of them, because I didn’t think I’d need them. If I go to refill the script this soon, I’m gonna risk getting looked at for drug abuse or drug dealing. And I should go back on my meds, right?” 

“Yes,” Eliot says. “You don’t get anything out of not taking them, Q, think of all the shit Margo and I take, and it never hurts our casting unless we’re too fucked up to function, which antidepressants are supposed to do the opposite of, yes?” At Quentin’s nod, Eliot continues, “OK then. So, we just have to get you the prescription without raising red flags… Do you mind if we tell Margo about this?” 

The idea of not telling Margo something is weird, to say the very least, but this isn’t like the dream trap Quentin’s hedge bitch of an ex-friend put on him. That, Eliot had told Margo about in a rant that may have possibly lasted for about an hour. This… is not his to tell, not without Quentin being all right with it.

“No, that’s all right. She can help?” 

“She has connections. Come on. This isn’t something that should wait.” 

“You know I’m not, you know. In a crisis mode right now, right?” Quentin says, but he gets to his feet and follows Eliot out anyway.

“I know. I’d just rather you stay out of one, if possible.” The idea of Quentin falling into a spiral because he didn’t have his meds… It really just doesn’t bear thinking about.

“It — you should probably know it won’t always be possible. If magic can’t really do more than back up the meds, then… Then my brain will just break sometimes. I won’t be able to totally help it.” 

Quentin sounds wary but determined, like he’s giving Eliot an out now before things become too painful for either of them. And that just won’t do. “Then it happens sometimes,” he says, turning around and catching Quentin by the arms, holding him in place. “We’ll deal. We’ve already seen you through some bad days, haven’t we?” 

Those are probably the tamer variety, a very quiet, blank-eyed Quentin who mostly just wants to curl up somewhere and not engage with the world, but he’ll let Eliot pull him in close as long as he doesn’t have to speak. Eliot can guess it gets worse in scary ways or nasty ones — Quentin can be vicious, he saw it that day at the bodega — and probably sometimes both at once, but still. Strangely, Eliot feels like he’d rather be there, even if there’s not much he can do, than to walk away and never  _ know _ what happened, if everything worked out.

“Yeah, you have,” Quentin agrees. 

“There you go then. We’ll work this out,” Eliot says, and he actually is almost as sure of that as he sounds. Mostly because it feels like nothing less is acceptable.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Margo hears the boys out when they show up at her room to explain Quentin’s situation, and then her immediate reaction is to swat Quentin upside the head. “Margo!” he yelps with more exasperation than anything else, which makes her smile. 

Eliot snickers behind his hand, though all he says aloud is, “Behave, children.”

“Next time one of the staff gives you health advice, check with us, got it?” she says, staring him down until he nods with a sigh. 

“Got it. I guess the thing I still don’t get is why. I mean, there’s gotta be a reason he wanted me off my meds, right? Do you think he thought the side effects could hurt my magic?” 

“Sweet summer child,” Margo says, and that earns her both Quentin wrinkling his nose and Eliot rolling his eyes skyward at the nerd moment. “He’s probably just one of those ableist dicks that also tells people they’ll be more creative if they don’t medicate. If you hadn’t noticed yet, Q, the staff here is not exactly overinvested in our safety.”

“Although with how much Fogg drinks, that makes him a fucking hypocrite,” Eliot adds, and them smirks when Quentin looks over at him. “Hey, I don’t tell anyone to stop putting whatever chemicals they want or need in their bodies, which means I’m not a hypocrite and can call it like I see it.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Quentin says. “Not really. I guess between the waiver and the Trials, not to mention Mayakovsky’s creepy shit… I’m starting to figure that out.” 

Margo exchanges a look with Eliot. “What creepy shit?” she asks, and Quentin shrugs. 

“He’s just… a fucked-up guy.” 

“Yeah, we know,” Eliot says. “He didn’t like me much, and he has opinions on queerness. Nothing I haven’t heard before, though I’ll concede that the slurs being in Russian was a novelty. He also hit on Margo, but she threatened to cut his balls off, professor or no, and that was that.” 

“There were rumors though,” Margo says. “The schoolwide one is that he got shipped down to Antarctica after inappropriate behavior with a student.” Actually, given the timing of when Mayakovsky became the South professor, Margo suspects that the student in question was Emily Greenstreet, and shipping Mayakovsky to South was more about sweeping Charlie Quinn’s death under the rug. Strangely, she feels no desire to share this. Something about Emily Greenstreet and Alice Quinn in the coffee shop that day, the rumors about Quentin, Alice, and Charlie the Niffin at Woof Fountain… It feels too  _ sad  _ to be gossip, even for her.

“Definitely likely,” Eliot agrees, nodding. “Though I can’t imagine who’d want to,” he adds with a grimace. 

“Me either,” Margo says. “Maybe he’s good at it, who knows? The big one in our year specifically though was that he got these two illusionist kids, turned them into Arctic hares or something and sent them out into the snow where, well… They fucked like bunnies. And they were definitely screwing each other the whole last day we were there.” 

Quentin’s face manages to do an odd thing where he blushes and goes pale at the same time. “Hares?” 

“Quentin?” Eliot says, frowning as he looks at him. 

“It’s just… It was foxes, for us. Me and Alice. We had sex as foxes, and after, but even as humans I don’t — we still felt like foxes? And I think — I like Alice, she likes me or at least she did, maybe we could have just figured, OK, this made us move faster but we were still gonna get here in the end, only then. Something happened, and Alice doesn’t remember anything except vague impressions. But I remember being with her, somewhere else in South, and her hair was paler, she was just, I don’t know. Sharper? And I was sort of giddy and silly at the time but in hindsight I think she was lying to me, she said we were tying knots for Mayakovsky but no reason why, it never came up again.” 

Quentin isn’t looking at them, has his gaze fixed on his feet. “So I don’t. I don’t know what he did to us but it wasn’t — it was fucked up and Alice thinks she was with me but that I hated her or something, on top of me being with her but her being weird.”

Margo looks at Eliot, and he looks as stunned as she feels. Mayakovsky turning people into animals and then letting those animal instincts override human hesitations, well. After they got back last year, Margo asked around and Mayakovsky’s done it before. It’s even happened sometimes when Mayakovsky wasn’t the teacher doing the shape change, but that seems to be more accidental. 

Basically, it’s a common side effect of shape changing people who are attracted to each other, but Mayakovsky seems to get a kick out of setting people up for it, or thinks it imparts lessons of some kind. The other thing though…

“Shit, Q, you’ve had one hell of a first semester, haven’t you?” she says to Quentin, because she can’t think of anything else to say. He’s startled enough by the flippant comment to look at her again, and even make a huff of sound that’s nearly a laugh.

“You could say that.” He shifts a little on his feet, almost swaying, and on a guess Margo nudges him and he tips sideways, landing more or less sitting on the edge of her bed and looking even more deer-in-headlights startled. Margo’s room is bright, too, with big windows that get in all the light even when, like now, they’re on the wrong side to see much sun. 

Margo sits next to him but Eliot leans against the wall, casual like he’s perfectly comfortable there. Margo gives him a Look — she knows he’s been weird about too much physical contact with Quentin since he saw Q and Gabriel the friend-with-benefits hooking up at the party two weeks ago. She thinks it’s ridiculous, really, but it seems to go along with his wanting to be serious about Mike, which she also doesn’t get. 

But not the point right now. “Are you saying Mayakovsky gave you fake memories, Q?” 

Quentin shrugs. “I don’t know. It also occurred to me it might have been a weird side effect of the shapeshift?” 

“It’s possible,” Eliot says. “Not likely, but remember Jake, Margo?” She does, so she nods. Eliot continues, “Jake was another physical kid, he was with me and Margo in the first and second Trial. When we got to South after being geese, he didn’t remember any of it. Something about being an animal and coming back wiped his memory for the past week. It creeped me out so I looked into it, and shapeshifts can lead to some weird memory shit. As well as the obvious that some people like being an animal and end up stuck that way.” 

“That’s mostly hedges who do some weird tattoo spell to shift, though,” Margo says, and something she can’t quite read flickers over Quentin’s face for a moment before it’s gone. 

“So… it was an accident?” he asks, folding his arms over his chest. 

“No, Mayakovsky is a fucking creep and putting that spell on you was absolutely on purpose. I’d say report him, but the kids last year did that and didn’t get anywhere,” Margo says firmly. “The memory shit might have been an unexpected side effect rather than him deliberately fucking with you more, but he’s still a twisted old drunk.”

“What the fuck is with this place? Is that why you said getting what you want is easier if you’re too fucking miserable to want it? Is that why Fogg wants me off my meds? Because the more fucked up we all get, the better it is for our magic?” 

“Quentin, I told you —” Eliot starts. 

“Yeah, yeah, Eliot. You told me it’s like adrenaline, and maybe it wasn’t my grief at Welters, it was just that the grief made me too numb to get in my own way. Well, maybe that’s it. If our teachers are fucking with us, and the goddamn dean tells those of us on psych meds we don’t need them, then maybe we’ll all end up so fucking numb that magic’s easier because it’s all we have!” 

Quentin fists his hands in his hair and Margo sees Eliot’s hand twitch like he wants to stop him. Then she sees Quentin’s fingers are white-knuckled like he’s about to yank chunks of his own hair out and she stops him instead, taking hold of his wrists and carefully drawing his hands away. 

Jesus fuck _ , this is not all right. _ “Hey,” she says, waiting for Quentin to look up at her before continuing. “Maybe it is what they think, but Fogg’s as much a drunk as Mayakovsky, if a lot less creepy. So who gives a damn what they think is right? They don’t know us, we’ll take care of ourselves,” she asks, pitching her voice softer than usual. It helped before, when Quentin was upset over his dad. “Listen. Let’s not go running tonight and waste a trip to the city on rushing. We’ll do a movie night, and tomorrow we’ll just take the whole damn day. We’ll do the responsible shit first, get your meds and potions, then we have the rest of the day for fun. Get all our minds off this screwed-up joint for a little while.”

“I can’t just cut class,” Quentin says, but he’s starting to look less upset. 

“Sure you can,” Eliot says, and now he joins them on the bed but sitting at the foot of it so he’s actually more next to Margo than Quentin. But he looks less worried now as Quentin looks less upset; Margo’s idea to take a day off is a concrete plan, something they can do and that’s always made both her and Eliot feel better. Feelings are hard, doing things is at least simpler. “And if you’re worried about your study buddies, tell the one who lives here, that girl I made the fancy margarita for after she crushed Todd so impressively.”

Quentin shakes his head, and Margo can feel herself relaxing to see him acting a little more like normal. “Her name’s Maria, Eliot, but yeah, OK, I can tell her. Why not? I even have a better excuse than most people for a mental health day.” 

The attempt at a joke is weak, at best, but Margo ruffles his hair for it because Eliot won’t, and because it makes Quentin yelp and duck away so he can smooth his hair back down again. “Good boy,” she says, and the way that turns his ears pink is interesting for a time with less heavy shit in the room. “As the ickle firstie here, popcorn’s your job, and then we can settle in, all right?” 

It’s the usual reasoning for making Quentin get their snacks when they watch movies, and Margo thinks treating him like things are normal is probably the best thing she can do. And she’s right, because it gets her the usual eyeroll but also a real, if tiny, smile before Quentin heads downstairs. 

Eliot flops backwards onto her bed and Margo shifts so she can look down at him. “You really think that memory fuckery wasn’t on purpose?” she asks him. 

“I don’t know,” Eliot says, running his hand down his face. “I hope so, and we can’t prove shit, but… There really is something wrong with this place. I’ve mostly been willing to chalk a lot of the dangerous stuff to magic just being that way, but....” 

“But how much of it is just magic is risky, and how much is our teachers being negligent bastards?” Margo says, making a face. “I’ve always figured it’s a mix of both, but this is nuts. I mean, telling a guy with severe clinical depression that his diagnosis was a mistake, and magic is all he needs? That’s like… like leaving a suicidal person alone in a room with a loaded gun.”

Margo isn’t on meds but her sophomore year roommate was, and she knows a little by osmosis on how meds aren’t a cure-all or anything, but it’s the difference between walking a tightrope with a safety net or doing it with nothing but air under you. “I’ll make space for your boy toy if I have to, but that one? He’s already with us, because God knows none of us can rely on anyone else.” 

“He’s got his study buddies, and his fuck buddy,” Eliot mutters, then scowls when Margo pokes him. “I agree, you know I agree. Q’s… he’s different, he always was. Even when I didn’t argue about you calling him the flavor of the month because that’s all he was supposed to be. And I have Mike, so I shouldn’t be a dick.”

“You know you’re being weird about it — seeing Q with his redhead. I don’t know if it’s about Q or about you having some kind of guilt about Mike, but… it’s getting kind of obvious,” Margo points out. 

“I’m not sure how to deal with the fact that seeing Quentin giving another guy a blowjob —” 

“Wait,  _ that’s  _ what they were doing? You weren’t specific before,” Margo says, delighted in spite of herself. She knew that boy had an oral fixation. “Did it look like he was any good at it?” 

“That was part of the problem,” Eliot says, giving her a death glare. “He looked like he loved it, and it was… He’s my friend, and I have a steady boyfriend, it shouldn’t have been hot.” 

“Eh, hot is hot regardless of what else is happening, you still have eyes and glands,” Margo shrugs. “Stop beating yourself up about it, El. It’s natural.” 

“How do you know? You don’t date. Hell, normally neither do I, so how do I know either?” Eliot sighs, closing his eyes. “I just know it’s all twisted up in my head, and now after what Q told us today I kinda want to hex Fogg into next week.”   


“I’m with you there. But I think —” 

“Let’s not right now, Bambi. There’s been enough complicated shit for one day,” Eliot cuts her off, and Margo decides not to push it. He’s right, after all. There has been more than enough heavy stuff today, and also she’s not really sure what to say. She thinks he’s being ridiculous, but she’s starting to think maybe she and Eliot aren’t as totally alike in this area as she’d thought, because she would have both hooked up with Q as friends by now and never would have wanted to date Mike. 

She almost never wants to date anyone, though, so really, how can she know how Eliot should handle this? She can’t, and that’s the unfortunate truth. And after all this, she doesn’t think she has the heart to throw Eliot and Quentin at each other just to get rid of Mike. It might fuck them both up and she doesn’t want that. If it happens anyway, she’s all for it, but the half-baked thoughts of making it happen? 

No. They’re  _ both  _ her boys now, apparently, and she doesn’t do that to her people. So they’ll go to New York tomorrow, do what needs doing and then just enjoy being twenty-somethings in the big city for a day. There are worse plans. 

And if she figures out how, she’ll hex Fogg so hard he won’t  _ function  _ for a week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter.


	3. Things Are Not What They Appear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Quentin, Eliot, and Margo have a day in New York, but when they get back, things take a quick turn into unexpected trouble...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Hope this finds you well! 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include further talk of depression and what I think is about canon-typical violence at the end of the chapter. Also, Eliot/Mike is discussed a lot and given the inherent consent issue there, warning for that too. And there's a brief mention of a hypothetical bomb.
> 
> Thanks as ever to Maii and my discord enablers. ;)

At first, Quentin isn’t awake enough to realize anything is unusual. He does feel warmer, the weight of his blankets heavier like the weighted blanket he used until he got weird stares from his freshman year dorm-mate and gave it up, but still mostly asleep, he burrows into the pillow because all he really registers is that it feels nice. 

Then something lands on his head. 

Quentin yelps and sits up to find that the thing on his face is one of his Fillory t-shirts, and also Margo is in his room, going through his drawers. “Um, what are you doing?” Quentin asks, completely bewildered. 

“Trying to find you something to wear — which would be easier if you’d finished unpacking, you weirdo,” Margo says, and that’s when Quentin notices that his black footlocker is also open. Which means — 

“The otter’s cute,” Margo says as Quentin’s horrified eyes fall on where Ollie is actually now sitting at the foot of his bed. Ollie is a stuffed otter — Quentin had been three when he picked the name — and Quentin usually keeps him hidden at the very bottom of his footlocker, which holds a significant portion of his clothes because in his room at Julia’s loft he hadn’t had much drawer space. He has the space now, so he had taken out some of the clothes and instead stored some of the books and other decorations his old room had. 

“Um,” Quentin says again, grabbing up Ollie and tucking him under the covers. It’s — he hasn’t needed to sleep with a stuffed animal since he was a kid, but it’s sort of… There are literally baby pictures of him in his crib with his toy otter lying next to him, he’s had it all his life and he feels more at home if he knows he has Ollie tucked at the bottom of his footlocker or a drawer. It had been a gift when he’d been born from his mom’s cousin Kat, who lives out in Seattle. Quentin’s never met her in person but she’d always sent every kid in her extended family the  _ quirkiest  _ gifts.

(Most of his favorite gifts from relatives are from Cousin Kat, actually.)

“Seriously, Q, don’t stress over it,” Margo says, rolling her eyes. “Stress over the fact that your wardrobe is a disaster and you’re only half-unpacked. We’re gonna fix that the next weekend we can steal Eliot away from Mikey-boy, warning you now.”

“My clothes are — are clothes, and they’re fine?” Quentin tries. 

“Your clothes are almost all at least a size too big,” Margo corrects. “Also, you could get way more mileage out of better-quality versions.” 

This feels a lot like Julia telling him he should get rid of his fandom t-shirts, or telling him he should start wearing a tie more often. The outfit he’d worn to his interview had been almost entirely on Julia’s advice — not her style at all, but she’d told him he should give off an academic’s vibe. He’d only gotten through the idea of wearing it by telling himself the tweed made for a stealth Indiana Jones in professor mode cosplay. He — he really doesn’t want to sit through more advice on fixing his wardrobe.

Something on Quentin’s face must tip Margo off because she smiles, stepping over to ruffle Quentin’s hair. “Again, relax, Coldwater. Not gonna put you in the kind of things El and I wear, you’d hate it. It’d be nice to see you dressed up for an occasion, sure, or for Halloween, shit like that, but only an idiot makes someone completely change their everyday wardrobe if they don’t want to. Look, I’ll give you a little demonstration today, see what you think.” 

Today — oh. Right. He has to get his meds, and after that Eliot and Margo decided to make a day of it in New York City. Quentin nods, then yelps again as Margo tosses a pair of jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt at him.

“Those look like they ought to fit, see you downstairs, kid,” Margo says, waggling her fingers in a lazy wave as she sails out the door, leaving Quentin staring after her in bewilderment. Then he takes in the state of his clothing-covered bed and floor, and just sighs. OK then. 

He gets out of bed and goes to shower, making it as quick as he can manage. He dresses in the bathroom with his hair still a little damp, and thinks about the fact that the portal, if it’s the same one he and Eliot used, is actually in Brooklyn, just a couple blocks from the little coffee shop he used to frequent. It had been, once upon a time, one of the only things he and Julia didn’t share, because she didn’t like their coffee. 

But they have really good breakfast sandwiches, and even better muffins, a ton of latte flavors, and just as many tea blends for people who don’t like coffee. 

Maybe if Eliot and Margo don’t want to eat breakfast here, he can suggest it as a place to go? Quentin kind of likes that idea; he knows that both of them spend plenty of time in the city anyway but Brownie’s Coffee is one of his spots, and the idea of bringing them there is — it’s nice. So he’d better get dressed and downstairs, so that he can suggest it. 

Although he’d love to know how Margo managed to find the one pair of jeans he has that James somehow managed to shrink that month he was trying to be a good boyfriend to Julia by helping with chores. Quentin isn’t even sure how his jeans ended up with Julia’s dirty clothes, but at least they’re still soft and comfortable. They just… fit more closely than most of his jeans. And he kind of has to laugh at the shirt, because the tiny symbol sewn on high on the left side is a little Starfleet badge. 

Did Margo know she picked out one of his nerd shirts? Quentin decides it doesn’t matter, and stops to grab his messenger bag and get his socks and shoes on before heading downstairs. As he reaches the ground floor, he spots Alice and Penny walking out the door — Penny doesn’t live here, and with Kady gone… 

Well. Good for them, he guesses. It’s not his business anyway. 

Eliot and Margo are sitting on their favorite bench nook waiting for him, and Eliot shakes his head when he sees Quentin’s bag. “You really do bring that everywhere, don’t you? Remind me to show you how to spell it to hold anything you want; if you’re going to carry it anyway, might as well make it as useful as possible.” 

“Wait, like a Bag of Holding?” Quentin asks. 

“A what?” Eliot asks, raising his eyebrows and affecting that cool distant look from the day they met. Only now Quentin knows when Eliot’s doing it to be irritating, so instead of getting awkward he rolls his eyes and steals a cigarette when Eliot opens his case to take one out. 

“Thief. I’ve been robbed,” Eliot deadpans. Margo rolls her eyes, snickering. 

“You’re both fucking ridiculous. Yeah, Q, like a Bag of Holding, only much cooler because it’s real,” she says. “Come on, boys. We have to find a place to eat and then go take care of Q’s errand before we can have fun, so let’s get going!” 

“Actually,” Quentin says as they leave the Cottage and head for the portal back to New York City, “I know a place we can stop for breakfast, if pastries or breakfast sandwiches are all right? This coffee shop I used to go to, not that far from where I lived before Brakebills, their stuff’s really good.”

“Sure, why not,” Margo says, hooking one arm through Quentin’s and the other through Eliot’s. It’s the kind of gesture that probably most people can’t pull off, but when Margo does it, not only does it work, but it’s very clear that she’s the one saying ‘these are my boys’. Quentin knows he’s not — that Eliot and Margo are, after a point, a closed circle, but still, he’s close, and he likes that. 

“Like a planet orbiting a binary star system,” Kit had declared the other day when the study group had decided to tease Quentin a little about the fact that he was sort of known as Eliot and Margo’s boy, which had been news to him because his ability to follow gossip is basically nil. It had been kind of embarrassing at the time but just now it’s a nice thought, that people just… think that. 

And Kit’s analogy isn’t a bad one either.

Brownie’s Coffee is only three streets over from the portal, and it’s honestly really fucking weird that Quentin and Julia lived so close to the portal from Brakebills, because the apartment is only six streets away in another direction. Quentin wonders if they were drawn to the area — Julia can’t cut it at Brakebills but she does have magic, and Quentin has magic, so maybe there’s something about the place? Maybe that’s why the bodega isn’t really all that far from here either? 

“Brownie’s Coffee?” Eliot laughs when they’re close enough to see the sign. “I can’t decide if that’s cheesy or actually kind of cute…”

“Oh, of course you love this place,” Margo says as soon as they get inside, and — OK, that’s fair. Brownie’s Coffee is not a fandom-themed place or anything like that - Quentin actually knows of some places in the city which are, and he likes a few of them — but it does have something of a  _ fantastical  _ vibe. The artwork hung on the exposed brick walls is all castles or sorcerers, faeries or mystical creatures. Like Quentin’s favorite, a phoenix rising from multicolored flames. Still, there’s no theme naming or things like that, although the tea blends in their glass jars and the cocoa blends in their shiny brass canisters do look a little like potion mixes arranged neatly on their shelves behind the counter.

It occurs to Quentin to wonder if maybe Astrid and Rhian, who own the coffee shop and live over it, are magicians — or maybe hedges. But he wouldn’t know how to ask and anyway they’re not here this morning. So instead he just orders his usual sandwich, mini-muffin, and coffee, stepping aside for Eliot and Margo to place their orders. “You should get a mini-muffin too if you get a sandwich,” he suggests. “They’re the best I’ve ever had, this way you get both.” 

Settling in at a corner table near Quentin’s favorite painting, Quentin is proved right by both Eliot and Margo’s expressions as they start to eat; he hides his smile behind his coffee cup. “So you came here a lot in undergrad?” Eliot asks, and Quentin nods. 

“Yeah, Julia doesn’t like their coffee so when I needed to study and things were too loud in the apartment — between her and James there were, like, basically always people and my room was more a part of the front room walled off by glass — or when, you know. When I managed to drag myself out in spite of not really wanting to get up, the people here don’t mind if you hole up at a table for hours as long as you buy a fresh drink now and again.” 

“How wired were you, drinking that much coffee?” Margo asks, and Quentin smiles. 

“Actually, I got in the habit of switching off with a couple of their other things. You know that spice tea I like so much? I actually buy it from the owners. They sell a couple of their best-selling blends in tea bag versions online.” 

“Do they sell this recipe?” Margo says, holding up what’s left of her red velvet muffin. 

“I can reverse engineer it, we’re stopping back to buy an assorted box and I’ll see what I can do, this weekend or maybe next, depending,” Eliot suggests.

“What, won’t you be busy with Mike?” Margo is the one who says it, with an edge of bitterness Quentin thinks she’s trying to curtail, but Eliot catches it anyway. Of course he does, because if Quentin did it must be glaringly obvious to Eliot. 

For a moment there’s silence, Eliot taking a long drink from his coffee cup. Then he sighs. “He’s been busy recently. Some kind of project at work’s not going as anticipated, he said there’s a woman he needs to track down and some kind of unexpected change he has to figure out the source of before he can do what he needs to.” 

“That sounds weirdly elaborate, what does he do again?” Quentin asks, noticing absently the way Margo rubs the back of her neck as if it’s suddenly itchy. 

“Marketing of some kind — magicians’ marketing often includes imbuing want ads with subliminal spells, but he says this thing is closer to corporate espionage.” Eliot’s mouth turns down as he folds his empty muffin wrapper into a tiny square, belying his carelessly light tone. “So, anyway, he’s busier than usual. Which means you two get to be graced with my presence more regularly.” 

“Oh, is that what it’s called?” Margo says, and Eliot’s smile returns, if a little smaller than usual. 

“That is absolutely what it’s called, Bambi. Don’t you agree, Q?”

Quentin holds up his hands as they both turn to him. “Ohhh no. I’m not getting in the middle of you two.” 

“Aw, that’s a pity,” Margo drawls, and there’s — something in the way she says that. Something that gives Quentin an alarmingly sharp image of exactly that. Being between the two of them, the way some rumors say they’ve shared boys before. And, OK, wow, inappropriate much? Maybe having a semi-regular sex life is a bad thing, because he doesn’t  _ think  _ that his mind would have gone right to that before?

He finishes his own spice cake muffin as a distraction from thinking about whether Margo’s hair is as smooth-soft as it looks, or wondering what Eliot’s faint stubble would feel like if they — 

Wow. Shit. OK. The last time this happened was junior year of high school and he vividly remembers looking at Julia one day and suddenly just, like, understanding the raging hormones stories people told about teenagers, or the way some of their classmates talked about making out and hooking up behind bleachers or in movie theaters, or in the backs of cars to be the ultimate cliche.

He never really felt like that about anyone else, in high school or college — a few weaker flickers of thought about James but that was it. Although in college he was more willing to take advantage of casual hookup culture because sex at least gets him out of his head. He’s not sure he always liked it, before fox-mojoed sex with Alice or his arrangement with Gabriel, but that’s another thing entirely. Everyone has bad sex, supposedly.

But he likes this. He always likes this, God help him, sitting with Eliot and Margo while they bicker and banter and include him from time to time like it’s easy, like he’s just  _ part  _ of them. 

So his wayward brain and whatever else need to stop, now. Right now. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot hadn’t fully realized how bright a mood Quentin was in, showing them his little haunt from before Brakebills, until they get to a drugstore and Quentin is suddenly very quiet, subdued and tense as he makes his way over to the pharmacy counter. Quentin gives the spiel they planned on the walk over about his supply of meds getting ruined because of a roof leak hitting the box, and next to him Margo performs an out-of-sight tut that makes the story entirely convincing. 

Eliot’s not a big fan of mind-fuckery spells, which means that while he’s  _ capable  _ of them, they don’t stick as well as they could. Margo is a little more ruthlessly practical in this particular area, and her casts have more staying power when it comes to this.

Instead, Eliot finds himself reaching for Quentin’s hand where it’s rubbing against the outer seam of his jeans, petting his thumb over Quentin’s knuckles to soothe him. It gets him one startled look out of wide brown eyes, but then a grateful if tiny smile. Quentin doesn’t seem inclined to let go as they settle in chairs to wait, and Eliot finds that he doesn’t want to either. 

Margo eyes their hands with an expression that tells Eliot he will be facing the Margo Inquisition later, but for now she joins in with Plan Distract Quentin by sharing some outrageous stories from Ibiza. Eliot isn’t sure if he’s more fond of the mischief in Margo’s smile or the way Quentin blushes, but he — 

He hates not spending as much time with Mike as they did the first few weeks. It reminds him of Mike fretting about Eliot getting bored with him, when the truth is Eliot is afraid of just the opposite. Because Mike is — he’s an adult, an actual adult with a job and an apartment in the city and all that shit. 

Eliot is not. He’s not a  _ child _ , but he’s still a student, which is a weird nebulous state between childhood and adulthood which he usually likes, thank you very much. Only it’s starting to feel a little confining, not because it’s stopped being fun but because he can’t do it forever, can he? And what is he without it? 

It’s easier to hold onto Quentin’s hand and help Margo tell a story from last year’s Ibiza trip. Eliot might be starting to worry that he won’t be enough for Mike as opposed to the other way around, but apparently this supportive friend thing is something he can do? It’s different with Margo, who never admits to needing support but on a couple dates out of the year needs to curl up in bed with a day’s supply of junk food and cheesy sci-fi television. 

(Eliot has, because of these few days, seen the entire run of whichever Star Trek has a black captain and a few episodes of the one with the bald English guy.)

It’s different, but it feels the same, because — because Eliot can do that. He can curl up with Margo or he can hold Quentin’s hand. Actually, the Star Trek cuddle pile might work on Q too, they should consider that, but that isn’t really the point here. The point is that he misses Mike but he also wouldn’t miss this time with his Bambi and his Q. The point is that what he would really like is to find a way to bring the two parts of his life together because if he can then maybe… maybe… 

Maybe then he won’t worry so much about not being enough for Mike, now that some of the shine has worn off. If Margo stops hating him, though Eliot does appreciate that she’s trying to be subtler about it, if Quentin stops being… vaguely weird about him, then maybe Mike will get along with them and that will cement things? Eliot only has three people, it’s not too much to ask, is it? 

They call Quentin’s name at the pharmacy counter and he jumps hard enough that his chair rattles, both of these things shaking Eliot out of his growing broodiness. If he wouldn’t trade this time, he tells himself, then he is damn well going to be present in it, and enjoy the company. Even if the company isn’t entirely happy, although as they head out of the drugstore, little bag tucked away in Quentin’s messenger bag, he seems to perk up a little. 

“At least it’s done now,” he says with a faint smile for both of them. 

“Exactly — though not completely,” Margo says. “We have one more stop to make, remember? My potioneer contact, for the side effects brew.” 

“We’re still going to the hangover recipe queen, right?” Eliot asks. “Speaking of.” 

“Yes, Eliot,” Margo says, laughing. To Quentin she adds, “Rae is one of the best ex-hookups I’ve ever had, because she is useful as hell. And sometimes she’s not even an ex-hookup, when both of us are in the right mood. Anyway, she’s got a full sideline in psych potions so I know she’ll have exactly the right brew.”

“Oh, um. That makes sense,” Quentin says gamely, and Eliot hides a smile at how he’s blushing, and at how much fun Margo’s having making him blush. 

“Come on, children,” he says lightly, wrapping an arm around each of their shoulders. “Let’s finish the necessary errands so we can get to the more enjoyable parts of our day, hmm?”

Rae Carter runs a plant and flower shop, which Eliot supposes is a reasonable Muggle occupation for a potions expert. She sells some of her mixes on the main shelves — herbal drinks, soaps, and lotions that have little or no actual magic in them but are blended according to the plants’ magical properties. Eliot happens to know that she keeps the truly magical stuff in the back, because he’s been here with Margo before. Come a couple times on his own, too. One of her shampoos is step one in his hair care routine, for one thing. 

Not one of the magicked ones either. He does use magical product on his hair, but not in the shampoo; he tried once and the result shall never be spoken of or pictured again. Grooming magic is like that; oddly temperamental, and makeup spells for anything more than preventing wear or smearing are much, much worse. He and Margo do occasionally find the effects useful at Halloween or similarly-themed costume events, but only then.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite show-offs,” Rae says as the three of them step inside. Her Deep South accent is thick enough to walk on, her lazy smile a strange visual echo of the drawl. “And you brought someone new. Hi there, Brown Eyes.” 

“Um. Hi?” Quentin says, clearly startled, and Margo laughs. 

“Hey. Q here needs one of your med supplements. Q, show her the prescription.” 

Quentin takes out the pill bottle, showing it to Rae, who puts on her reading glasses to look at it more closely. “Lucky for you, this is one I brew up a lot, I have a few bottles.” 

Quentin ends up buying three, with directions to take two spoonfuls a day right after he takes his meds. “Does it taste like the hangover cure?” Eliot asks curiously, because useful as that little brew is, it is also fucking vile. 

“The hangover cure is designed to work  _ and  _ to be a warning about overindulgence,” Rae says, smirking. “Herbal medicine doesn’t usually taste  _ good _ , but this one isn’t too bad.” 

“It’s just two spoonfuls, I can wash it down afterwards,” Quentin says with a shrug. 

Margo leans over the counter with a smirk, and Eliot catches Quentin by the elbow. “Why don’t we wait outside?” he suggests, and the two of them go outside while Margo angles for her own weekend of a certain type of fun in the city, unless Eliot’s missed his guess. Leaning against the telephone pole outside, Eliot lights a cigarette, and smiles around it when he sees the one Quentin has is the one he stole earlier. 

“What is this?” Quentin says after taking a drag, looking at Eliot in bewilderment. 

“Clove, so much better than those shitty menthols of yours,” Eliot teases. “Generally illegal in this country, but if you know where to look they’re easy enough to find.” 

“I like my menthols,” Quentin says, rolling his eyes. “I don’t smoke regularly anyway,” he adds, even though he’s lighting up right now and the look on his face says that he’s noticed Eliot is, in fact, right about how much nicer these are. “Ever considered e-cigs or something? Since you like the flavor thing?” 

“I have a vape pen in my room,” Eliot says thoughtfully. “Mostly I use it for certain offerings of the Naturalist crowd, though I have tried some of the standard nicotine options. Nice change of pace but not quite the same as a cigarette.” He likes smoking for the aesthetic as much as the nicotine, for the routine of the flick of a lighter or the snap of a minor fire spell. In the old movies he used to watch when he could get away with it, there were only cigarettes and cigars, and he’s never been much of a cigar fan really. Vapes just don’t feel right, day to day. 

“I could see you with a vape pen though,” he adds, nudging Quentin playfully till he gets a combination eye-roll and helpless smile. “Maybe the flavor-only types for anxiety?” 

“What, you think something in my mouth will help me worry less?” Quentin says, raising his eyebrows, and Eliot has half a second of almost choking on his tongue because all he can see is Quentin on his knees and —

Damn it. 

“Rumor has it that some people find it helpful,” he says with a casual shrug that helps remind him he’s not supposed to be thinking about that. “Too hipster for you?” 

“I don’t think it’s particularly hipster, but it does seem like a lot of effort and money to breathe flavored vapor if there’s nothing in it,” Quentin shrugs. 

“You really are solidly middle-class, aren’t you,” Eliot says in mock-despair. 

“Raised by a single dad since the age of twelve, these things happen,” Quentin deadpans. His mouth twists for a moment and Eliot remembers the spell that had gone so utterly wrong with poor Gerald, or the odd pensive mood Margo’d had post-Welters, after talking to Quentin. Instead of letting the gloom settle, Eliot reaches out and catches hold of a bit of Quentin’s hair, tugging gently and making him jump with surprise. 

“Really?” he says.

“I am a very touchy person,” Eliot says airily, because it’s true and also Quentin has unfairly soft hair for the effort he categorically does not put in. 

“What are you two doing?” Margo cuts in before Quentin can say anything, hands on her hips and a sly smile on her face that says her… negotiations with Rae went exactly as she’d wanted them to. “Come on, we have better things to do than just  _ stand here.” _

And, well, she’s right, isn’t she? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Margo comes from the kind of rich parents who stick their kids in all the extracurriculars they can so they don’t have to raise them. With hindsight, she can see this was true even when she was still daddy’s little girl — sure, her father liked to take her places on weekends and during the summer, he spent time with her… but it was on his terms. Convenient. Just like it all ended up on his terms in the end; conditional affection that Margo refuses to let herself miss. 

She grew up. But she doesn’t like to think about that. 

The point is, Margo spent a significant chunk of her childhood taking music classes, dance classes, art classes, in fancy summer camps and shit like that. Some of it’s come in handy in ways she didn’t necessarily expect (like her own Trials last year), but she hasn’t kept up with most of it for its own sake except the oil painting. It’s not a constant thing, she doesn’t have time for that. But every now and then she gets an itch, and some of her paints are running low, so a trip to the art store is in order.

Eliot, predictably, rolls his eyes — even though Margo knows he’ll leave with something, usually clay. Or there was the body paint incident last summer. What is a surprise is the way Quentin’s eyes light up. “I’ve been wanting to pick up some drawing supplies,” he says with a smile. And so it’s decided, they’re starting their shopping at the art store. 

They split up at first, Eliot still pretending to be annoyed as he drifts off toward — oh, the embroidery area? OK, Margo can see that, if he goes for it. Quentin makes for the sketchpads, and Margo takes her time picking out replacement paints and a few new brushes, then goes in search of her boys. Eliot is over by the clay now, as predicted, and a moment later she spots Quentin too.

“Hey,” Margo says, hip-checking Quentin as she comes up beside him over at the colored pencil sets. “Why don’t we cheer up the tall grumpy one over there by having him model for us?” 

“Why will that cheer him up?” Quentin asks. 

“Because he’s vain as a peacock and it’s an excuse to be lazy and show off all at once,” Margo laughs. “First, though, clothes shopping. And don’t wince at me, Coldwater. I promise it’ll be mostly painless.” 

Quentin sighs. “Can’t I just be your captive audience or something?” 

Margo grins. “That is most of the plan, but indulge us a little, huh?” She wouldn’t push except that thinking about clothing will keep him from brooding too long on the fact that he still needs his meds after all, even if the idea of clothes shopping is an annoying distraction. As for Eliot, Margo wants to get his mind away from whatever’s making him fret when he thinks she can’t see. Mike, probably, given what he said at the pharmacy. 

Part of Margo hopes that with the shine wearing off, they’re coming close to seeing the back of Mike McCormack, but she would  _ prefer  _ it not happen in a way that leaves El fucked up or hurting. Since she can’t control that, she’ll keep her boy busy instead. It is just possible that including Quentin in the clothes shopping is also part of the distract Eliot goal, but if she says that Quentin will turtle on them and Eliot will deny it while running away. 

So discretion,  _ for now.  _

“Why is me trying on clothes indulging you?” Quentin asks. 

“Oh honey. Because we’ve been wanting to give you a makeover since day one. Don’t look so nervous. I told you I’m not talking about changing the type of things you wear — you’d look good in the fancier stuff we’d pick, but you’d hate it and never wear it, what’s the point of that? I’m just talking about nicer versions of the things you’d wear anyway.”

Margo ruffles his hair and makes her way over to Eliot. “Got the nerd to agree to a mini-makeover,” she says, smirking when his eyes widen. “I figure we can add a few pieces to our wardrobe, then I can show him that little store where I get all my stealth nerd gear?” 

“Excellent plan, Bambi. Start with you or me?” 

“Art store was for me, so you get to go first,” Margo says with a shrug. “Are you buying the clay?” 

“That and some wire,” Eliot says with a shrug. Margo, curious, glances into Eliot’s basket and also sees adhesive and… feathers?” 

“Eliot, please tell me you’re not going Icarus on me.” 

“Hm. Not exactly, but I have thoughts better tested on tiny clay people than on actual people. Remember that animation spell I learned last year, the one that I made those creepy dolls dance with?”

“Yes — please never do that again.” 

“The dolls’ owner is from the third-year class, remember? I think she left instead of dying, can’t recall now, but anyway, they aren’t there anymore, I can’t do it again. Anyway, I was getting rid of that jerk from the Healer cohort, at least it worked?”

She can’t exactly argue with that. And it had been funny to watch Brandon — or was his name Brad? Or Brian? — run out of the Cottage with a line of porcelain dolls chasing him. She doesn’t know exactly what the guy did, Eliot never got specific, but she does know being chased out was his punishment for not taking no for an answer on something. Apparently he had a phobia about dolls, hence the choice of payback.

“So you’re going to make clay people with wings?” she asks.

“Maybe. I have thoughts. Mostly idle ones, but we do have to be third-years next semester, and God knows I’m not going to get any useful ideas from the advisors.” Eliot shrugs. “And if nothing else, it should be amusing.”

Margo has some thoughts about her own thesis — ice weaponry appeals, though she’s no t sure how workable it is — but even she sometimes forgets that Eliot is a lot better at this shit than he appears. She’s  _ also  _ better than it seems; she picks her classes strategically so that some of them are easy As and therefore she can put what focus she needs to on the harder stuff, but Eliot plays careless indifference even more thoroughly than she does. 

“Eliot Waugh, are you trying to give yourself wings?” she asks, and — oh. She’s starting to get that itch, the one that comes with a picture in mind… That might just work. Good thing she bought new paints today, isn’t it?

“Now now, Bambi, that would be telling.” 

Which absolutely means yes, the enigmatic bastard. “Hm,” is what Margo says aloud. “You have to take me flying if you do.” 

“Well, obviously.” 

“Damn straight it’s obvious. Now let’s go collect our nerd boy and get out of here.” 

So that’s what they do. They head off to one of Eliot’s favorite shops, where he tries on about twenty vests and leaves with two, and Margo has to restrain herself from a full-blown giggle fit at Quentin’s utter bewilderment at this procedure. The next store they go to is one of her favorites, but Margo handles this stuff differently than Eliot; she prefers to take only the things she thinks she’ll actually want off their hangers to try, while Eliot likes to test out everything. 

At the third store, though, it’s a place they both like, so they both go clothes hunting. Quentin, apparently resigned to his fate by now, settles in a chair off to the side like he did at the last two places, but this time Margo catches sight of him in the mirror as she and Eliot consider whether the vest and trousers he’s trying on coordinate with the dress she’s trying. 

In the mirror Margo can see that Quentin’s taken out one of the little sketchbooks he’d bought, about the size of those Moleskine notebooks one of her exes had a whole damn collection of. And see, here’s the thing. Up until now, Margo has thought Quentin’s cute, in an awkward nerd way. Soft and moody by turns, and very much Eliot’s usual type but not generally her own. 

Except Quentin’s eyes flick up while Margo watches his reflection, and he must not realize she’s watching him and not her own reflection, because he doesn’t duck back down again. He’s looking at both of them with an intensity she’s never seen from him, eyes flicking over them both before he looks back down at his sketchbook to add a few more lines.

And for some reason, for the rest of the damned day, Margo can’t get the memory of those focused dark eyes out of her head.

This is an unexpected fucking development, and what exactly is she supposed to do about it?

Margo decides not to think about it, focusing instead on their next stop, where Quentin’s the one they chivvy into the dressing room, arms full of long-sleeved t-shirts and jeans that will actually fit him. No black, but jeans in both blue and grey, shirts in dark shades of blue, green, and red, and even a deep purple one that Eliot got Quentin to agree to by giving him a particularly soft smile. 

Margo had hidden her own inexplicable urge to ruffle Quentin’s hair and then pull on it to see which gets a better reaction by finding a pair of olive green jeans and dropping them on top of Quentin’s stack.

“Bet you once he feels how soft they all are, we get a convert,” Eliot says with a grin. 

“Sucker bet, I’m not taking that,” Margo says, and is proven right when they end up leaving with all the clothes in a bag. Unfortunately, their nerd boy wouldn’t model for them, but Margo’s sure they’ll see the results soon enough.

“As a reward, we’re going to a store you’ll actually like,” Margo says as they leave, and laughs when Eliot groans theatrically. “Ignore him, he’s just as much of a nerd, but his thing is theater.” 

“I am not a theater nerd,” Eliot insists, all the way to The Tower Room, but given he immediately disappears to their Broadway merch section, Margo feels that is more than enough to prove her right. She laughs, giving Quentin a sly look that makes him laugh with her. 

Damn. What the fuck is going on here? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It’s actually not that bad, Quentin decides, to be dragged along by Eliot and Margo. Sure, he has no idea what any of their clothing styles are about, and he’s pretty sure all the things they picked out for him are a size too small. But he has the beginnings of several drawings of both of them in one of his pocket-sized sketchbooks. 

The sketches are a little rusty, still, because  _ he’s  _ rusty for all that he’s been practicing for the past few weeks so he can do better ink magic. But they’ll be good enough references for him to work on better drawings with. He used to do it all the time, and it’s kind of nice to start again. 

There’s a moment when he thinks Margo caught him, but he’s sure that if she did, she would have teased the hell out of him, so he must have been mistaken. And after they stick him in new clothes that aren’t too bad except for how they fit tighter — but they’re so soft he already knows he’s going to wear them anyway, it’s not uncomfortable and constricting like it usually is — they go to a little store called The Tower Room, which turns out to be a stealth nerd store.

“I have a pair of crystal earrings like these, no one knows they’re kyber crystals,” Margo tells Quentin with a sly smile, waving at a rack of Star Wars earrings, some of which are obvious and some of which are not. He thinks of the shirt he’s wearing with its clear but not blatant Star Trek trim, and realizes she knew exactly what shirt she’d tossed at him this morning. 

So Quentin leaves with three more shirts, a pair of thin leather wristbands with quotes on them, and a jacket that looks like Poe Dameron’s except in shades of grey. He grins at the delicate necklace Margo buys that looks like it comes from Rivendell and pretends not to notice that Eliot leaves with cufflinks and a ring that are replicas from some play Quentin can’t actually name. They spend the rest of the day wandering the city, eating lunch at a tiny place in Chinatown Eliot knows and finding dinner at a quiet bistro Margo likes. All in all, it’s a good day, and Quentin is barely able to brood by the time they go home and he gets back to his room. 

He has a moment the next morning when he takes his pill and follows it up with two tablespoons of a potion that tastes strangely like a combination of overbrewed tea and the grass stalks he and Julia used to chew in middle school. For a moment, as he drinks a glass of water to wash away the taste, he finds himself wishing bitterly that there really should be a spell or a potion to take away depression or anxiety or… 

Or cancer.

But in the end, magic can’t cure any of that. Or, so he’s heard, the common cold, though there is a potion that helps. For a moment, Quentin just stands there in the kitchen staring blankly at the countertop, consumed by the unfairness of it and barely restraining himself from throwing his glass against the wall.

But it doesn’t last, because really, he’s still at fucking  _ magic school, _ and he has friends. Having to keep up his meds after all isn’t the worst deal he can think of, and at least he found out before something particularly bad happened, right? It’s not so bad, in the end. Or so he tells himself, and so he will tell himself until he believes it more. 

Anyway, the meds were never the worst part. The worst part was always trying therapist after therapist, and never finding a good fit. Hopefully the combination of magic and science will mean that won’t ever be necessary again? 

“Are you cosplaying Poe Dameron in greyscale?” is the first thing Kit says when Quentin finds the rest of the study group over by the student center that morning. He pulls the sleeves of his new jacket down over his hands but doesn’t argue the point because, well. That is where the jacket’s design comes from. 

“Tell me you didn’t skive off just to go shopping,” Maureen says. 

“Are you British today? ‘Skive off,’” Quentin deadpans. Maureen throws a wadded-up napkin at him. 

“We’re Irish, I’ll have you know.” 

“If it’s Irish-American, does it count? Anyway, sort of but it was a medical kind of errand, then Eliot and Margo suggested wandering around the city to cheer up, that’s all.” 

“Well, I like it,” Gabriel says, giving Quentin a very obvious once-over and then a playful wink. Quentin rolls his eyes. 

“See, this is why people think you’re their boy toy,” Maureen points out, and Quentin can feel himself blushing. Which is the kind of thing most people would call a dead giveaway, but luckily for him they’re at the botany greenhouse by now, and that means behaving themselves.

Quentin is not the biggest fan of botany, as a rule. He spent one summer gardening with his stepmother when he was seventeen — it was after his second hospitalization, and Molly had been trying to connect with him properly for the first time. It hadn’t been bad, exactly, except that when they went inside there was Quentin’s mother and she’s always been much harder to be around. 

But still, the memories of the garden aren’t bad. And if it was just tending the plants like it was then, Quentin wouldn’t mind. He likes the hands-on feeling of that. But he just is not great at memorizing the plants. He’s better than he was, at least, but still… He has to put all his focus on his notes, and even then —

Oh.  _ Oh _ . He’s a fucking idiot, actually. 

For every plant they discuss that day, next to his notes Quentin does a little sketch of each plant, with the best color approximation the basic 12-color set of colored pencils can give him. (He did buy nicer pencils yesterday, but he left those in his room.) He lingers after class too, because he has a free period next, to add sketches to his earlier notes. 

“I had a student who used to photograph them all with an old Polaroid,” Professor Rosen says, giving Quentin a thin smile and seeming amused by him. Quentin returns it with some surprise; their botany professor is a sharp-tongued woman who doesn’t seem to like anyone, and everyone says she talks to her plants like they’re people, or at least pets. Even now, she’s stroking the leaves of a plant Quentin initially thinks is a fern but — oh. No. According to his notes it’s got only an insanely long Latin name and is used in both healing spells and exotic curses. 

That’s actually really cool, the idea that the same ingredients can hurt or heal, depending. It reminds him of how he’d been weirdly fascinated to learn, in eighth grade science, that sodium on its own explodes in water, but mixed with chlorine it becomes salt. 

(He’d always wondered what would happen if you put sodium into a heavily chlorinated pool, actually. Also if sodium and water could make an actual bomb.)

“I figured this was politer,” Quentin explains with a sheepish little shrug, finishing the last line on his last sketch. 

“Right. Well, don’t knock anything over.” 

Quentin nods, vaguely bewildered, watching as Professor Rosen opens a door in the glass wall that looks like it should lead outside but actually leads to an office. Wow, OK, that’s pretty fucking cool. Before the door shuts he catches a glimpse of a picture on the wall, Rosen with a taller, dark-skinned woman’s arm around her shoulders, four kids and a very large dog in front of a small house. 

Quentin turns away before the door actually closes, and he leaves smiling to himself, because — Professor Rosen is, weirdly enough, one of his favorites for all she’s grumpy and quick to go on the attack. Normally that would make his anxiety kick up, especially since he’s never been good at botany, but a lot of the teachers here are… They tend to talk in, not always riddles but almost always like they know things you don’t and they want to make sure you know you’re in the dark. Rosen is direct to the point of being painfully blunt, and she apparently approves of his new memory aid idea. 

So it’s nice to think she has a happy family somewhere, which is what that photo seems to say. It’s not his business, but it’s still nice. 

“You have a free period right now, yeah?” says someone behind him, and Quentin turns to see Gabriel leaning against a lightpole, smiling a little. 

“I might,” Quentin says with a smile of his own. 

They aren’t late to their next class, but they are a little rumpled. Quentin is also mildly exasperated; he’s been meaning to ask Gabriel about his wolf tattoo because he noticed a few days ago that Aislinn and Maureen have similar designs, only theirs are of different big cats. But when he went to ask just now he was very… thoroughly distracted. 

Which is enough of a mood improvement to last him until they get to their next class, because apparently Professor Sunderland has decided the official study groups aren’t good enough. “It’s all well and good for you to learn from each other, and I’ve seen marked improvement among some of you that can only be from learning in group.”

Quentin swears he sees her gaze flick to him, and tells himself he’s imagining it. 

“However, if you spend too much time with the same people, that can become a crutch. For now, some of you will get to stay with at least one person you’re familiar with, to ease you into new combinations.” 

Quentin expects to find himself left with Maureen or Kit, then, since they’re the ones who are officially his partners. Instead, Sunderland keeps him with Aislinn, who smiles ruefully. “Guess they’re onto us and our team-up.”

“Were we hiding it?” Quentin asks. 

“No, but it’s still a little embarrassing to be so obviously caught out. Maureen and I are usually more subtle. Our parents would not approve. But then again, we’re not Morgans here, are we?” 

Quentin isn’t exactly sure how to respond to that. Aislinn, Maureen, and Gabriel do this sometimes — they talk like their family names mean more than just names, like they’re the modern-day American version of aristocrats or something, like Downton Abbey shit. He tries to change the subject instead. “Hey, you know your tat—” 

But he stops talking abruptly when they’re joined by Alice and Penny, who don’t look any happier about this development than Quentin feels.

“Two psychics and two physical kids, off you go,” Sunderland says. Quentin is tempted to point out that he’s not really a physical kid and Sunderland of all people fucking knows that, but Sunderland is also the woman who almost expelled him and Quentin kind of doesn’t want to confront her ever again in case it somehow lands him back in that kind of trouble. 

So he just follows the others out to go work on their damned project. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Intermediate Transfiguration has never been Eliot’s favorite class, and usually he skips it unless there’s an exam, because the professor conveniently does not give a shit. He’s the kind of guy who enjoys teaching the students who care and is perfectly happy to let everyone else do as they please. Eliot usually scores well anyway thanks to his independent study time. Margo calls them cramming sessions and Quentin’s taken to calling it the Insomnia Club, but Eliot stands by ‘independent study’, thank you very much.

Anyway. He usually skips it, but the thing is that he’s going to need it if he goes through with the plan of ‘make myself wings’ for his thesis. So he figures he might as well start going to the lectures more often, in case there’s something useful that comes up in discussion but isn’t in the official material. So he’s there, lounging in a seat in the back of the class, enchanted pen transcribing every word said — and because it’s one of those multi-ink pens, in different colors depending on the speaker. 

It’s a tacky sort of pen, of course, but it’s the best kind for this particular spell when there’s more than one person to record, and so needs must. 

Eliot will never admit it, but Professor Seddon is actually interesting, now that he’s in the class and listening. How unexpected. 

After class, he’s headed back toward the Cottage when he hears someone call his name. He knows that voice, and can already feel the grin big enough to dent his reputation as he turns to see Mike coming his way. “Hey you,” Mike says easily, leaning in to kiss Eliot softly in greeting. Eliot smiles into it, the grin sharper now. 

(Part of him, he will admit, likes just knowing he can  _ do this _ , kiss a boy hello.)

“Hi,” Eliot says. “What brings you here? I thought you were still working on that project.” 

“I was. I am. Kind of. Next bit of it is actually something I need to take care of here but I do have time before and after.”

A part of Eliot wonders what Mike could possibly be doing that’s work-related here at Brakebills, but maybe he needs the library again? Or needs to talk to a professor? Either would make sense, that’s one reason why alumni keys even exist, right? “Great,” he says. “I don’t have class again until the afternoon, so I have time too. Also… I wanted to talk to you about something.” 

“Uh-oh. That usually isn’t good,” Mike jokes. 

“No, no, nothing like that. I was just thinking about going out to dinner —” 

“I think you know I’m always up for a date.”

“That is good to know,” Eliot says lightly. “But not actually what I meant. I meant you and me, with Margo and Quentin.” 

“The nerd kid in the South sweater? I thought he was sleeping with the blonde girl, not your friend who, I might remind you, had a genie spell me into licking a doorknob, Eliot. Not sure I’m up for a double date.” 

Shit. “No, I know what happened,” Eliot sighs. “But — look. Margo and I… It’s been just her and I for a while. I’m not sure I would have been any less petty and grumpy if she’d been the one to find a new guy and then bail on me for Ibiza. She said she’s willing to try, and I really want you guys to at least get along.” 

“And the nerd boy?”   


“Quentin,” Eliot says. “He and Margo aren’t dating, he’s seeing some illusionist kid, I think.” He  _ knows _ , the memory still in goddamned high definition. “But he’s my friend, he and Margo are… they’re my people, Mike. And I really need this.” Why does this feel somehow even more vulnerable than telling Mike about Indiana? It’s just — Mike had said at the time, when Eliot had ended up him telling him that, that he felt bad he didn’t know how to do the kind of gestures Eliot did. Eliot had literally told him that to make him  _ feel better. _ And now...

Well, now Eliot is asking for something, and Mike apparently needs persuading. It stings a little, somehow, but he guesses given how Margo and Mike met it’s understandable. But he doesn’t like it. Margo’s making the effort for his sake, can’t Mike? And the ‘nerd boy’ thing bugs Eliot too, even though he started it that day in the yard.

He’s just being stupid.

“For us to get along, if not actually be friends?” Mike says. 

“Or just play nice at dinner. See what happens,” Eliot says. 

“Yeah, all right,” Mike says after a moment, with a soft smile that makes Eliot’s vague irritation vanish as if it never happened. 

“You said you have some time right now?” he asks, letting his own smile turn suggestive. 

“I’d make time if I didn’t.” 

Eliot has a mark just a little too high on his neck to easily hide by the time Mike leaves him to go take care of his errand, and Eliot himself heads off to meet Margo by the clock tower. He’s a little achy but in the best way, and something besides the hickey must show because Margo laughs when she sees him. 

“Someone’s been having fun. I take it this means your boytoy is back around?” 

“Bambi, you promised to be nice,” Eliot reminds her. 

“I know, I know. It’s a work in progress. Seriously, though, just yesterday you were saying he had work stuff?” 

“I know. Apparently he has a work-related errand that brought him back to campus, which is where he is right now. Anyway,” Eliot continues, wrapping his arm around Margo’s shoulder as they walk, “I talked to him about having dinner with you and Q and me. Thoughts?” 

“Might as well get it done,” Margo sighs, but she’s smiling, and so Eliot decides to take that as a win. Even if he can tell it’s not a real smile. 

Baby steps are a fair deal for now, right?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It’s  _ definitely  _ not a real smile, but not exactly for the reason Eliot probably assumes. Oh, Margo’s not thrilled about the dinner idea; she’d hoped that with Mikey-boy busy with work, she’d either have more time to adjust to the idea of playing nice or things would fizzle out with Eliot before she had to. Also, she has to admit she’d wanted a day or two with Quentin at arms’ length until she processes her weird reactions to him yesterday. 

Apparently neither of those things is going to happen, and she’s just going to have to deal. 

But it isn’t just that. Something doesn’t feel right. She can’t put her finger on it, exactly, it’s just… it’s… 

“This will make you see time,” the guy at Ibiza had said, and Margo had woken up with her feet in the surf and almost no clear memories of what she’d seen, except an overwhelming sense that most of it was not good. And, also, that her dislike of Mike had a good reason behind it. 

The back of her neck is prickling now. Something about this work errand… She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t know why. But it’s true, whether she understands it or not. “I’ll be perfectly nice,” she promises. “No djinn, not even a snide comment.”

It occurs to her that if she turns on the charm, she might be able to find out more about Mike and figure out just what it is that sits so wrong. Even if he’s gay as opposed to bisexual, Margo is sure that she’s up to the task. She’s not sure how good Quentin will be as a scheming partner — she’s seen him play Push but she’s also seen him the rest of the time — but if she tips him off to keep Eliot occupied it just might work… 

“Huh?” she says, realizing she’s missed a comment from Eliot. 

“I  _ said _ ,” Eliot says with exaggerated affront, “I feel like a pod person, I actually went to Intermediate Transfiguration today. Even more gauche, I liked it.” 

“Ugh, I know. Don’t worry, it’ll be our little secret as long as you never tell anyone my favorite class this year is History of Magic.” 

“I’d never dream of it. What do you like so much anyway?” 

Margo shrugs. “Well, the class is over at the museum, so we get to do more than just sit through lectures. They actually have stuff from some of the things we talk about. Mostly I like that it’s easy to keep up with.” Not that Margo doesn’t appreciate a good challenge, but there’s something oddly relaxing about history classes in general. You just have to keep track of the stories, and it’s basically the same skill set that’s made her the gossip queen of Brakebills. 

At least, it is for her.

“You know me,” she adds. “I like anything I’m good at.” 

“Can’t argue with that — wait, why is Mike over here?” Eliot says, and Margo turns to see Mike heading toward where the astronomy classrooms and outdoor work areas are. He doesn’t so much as slow down when Eliot calls his name, which is kind of an asshole move about your boyfriend even if he’s presumably on his work errand. 

So Margo doesn’t object when Eliot starts following him. “I don’t get why he’d just ignore me,” Eliot says, sounding worried and annoyed at the same time. 

“Me either,” Margo says, and surprisingly she is not mentally crossing her fingers that whatever’s going on leads to a breakup. That sense of wrongness is worse than ever, and there’s something about the way Mike’s walking that reminds her of a predator on the hunt. Which, she doesn’t think much of Mike but she had paid _some_ attention and that had not been his vibe at all. 

Not until now. 

“What the —?” she hears Eliot say at the same time she realizes that Mike is heading for a group of students at one of the work areas. A group of students that includes  _ Quentin _ . “Mike!” Eliot calls again, and this time Margo adds her voice to his because maybe he just didn’t hear — 

And that’s when Margo sees the thing in Mike’s hand, and all she can think to do is break into a run. “Eliot, he’s got a fucking knife!”

  
  


<><><>

  
  


They end up at the astronomy area because it’s on the edge of campus, and in broad daylight usually pretty deserted. Quentin has the distinct sense that none of them want to suggest using one of their own rooms for this — he certainly doesn’t — so a deserted part of campus is the best they’re going to get for privacy. Looking at the assignment Sunderland gave them, Aislinn clicks her tongue. “I have a book that might help us with this, let me go back to my dorm and get it?” 

“We could get it out of the library,” Alice says. “Although Sunderland said all we needed was in the books she listed, which we already got.” 

“It’s not a textbook, it’s a grimoire. Family-created,” Aislinn explains. 

“Homebrews? I don’t think that’s a good idea.” 

“My grades have gone way up since I started using some of the twins’ tricks, among other things,” Quentin says. “Not to mention my shielding. It’s worth a shot.” 

“Not that I was asking permission so much as making a suggestion,” Aislinn adds, voice clipped. “I’ll be back.” 

“Great. We’re stuck with a simpleton and a chick who wants to experiment,” Penny mutters, and Quentin scowls. 

“Oh fuck you, what makes you think you’re the only one who doesn’t like this arrangement? Why would I want to do a project with a dickhead who tried to get me expelled and someone who barely wants to acknowledge my existence?”

Penny narrows his eyes. “You’re a whiny little shit who couldn’t fucking shield till someone held your hand, apparently and you think your life sucks when you don’t know how goddamn good you have it.”

“Both of you stop it,” Alice snaps. “Quentin, you know why I’ve been avoiding you. We were both basically roofied.” 

“Yeah, we  _ both  _ were, so why am I the bad guy?” 

“I needed space, you’re not the bad guy. But now you’re kinda doing a good job of acting like it,” Alice says, folding her arms, and just like that the anger seems to… lessen, at least. Because Alice looks almost as uncomfortable as she did that day at South. 

“Fuck,” Quentin mutters. “I’m sorry, all right? I just wish you’d told me you’d need space for a while when we agreed we were still friends. Then I wouldn’t have been blindsided by it.” 

“She doesn’t owe you that,” Penny mutters. 

“And I care what you think why, exactly?” Quentin asks him. Penny just stares him down, unimpressed, and Quentin sighs. “Look, we worked together well enough in the Trials, right? We both want to be here, so let’s just… deal with it.” 

“That seems fair,” Alice chimes in. “Although he’s right. I didn’t owe you that… but in your shoes I might have been upset too. I’m still not comfortable, but let’s agree to hate Mayakovsky and not each other?” 

Quentin almost laughs. “I can work with that. When you are up to it, maybe we should report him, for all the good it’ll do?” 

“I’m ready to do that whenever you are,” Alice says. “Penny?” 

Penny sighs, but then he says, “Whatever they showed you, you’re not doing a half bad job with the shielding these days, Coldwater. But if you make me hear Taylor Swift again I will not be responsible for my actions, you got that?” 

“Trust me, I didn’t like you hearing my thoughts any more than you wanted to hear them,” Quentin says, very sincerely. If he trusted Penny and Alice more he might defend himself against what Penny said by explaining the depression thing, but… Well. He  _ doesn’t  _ particularly trust them, at least not with more personal stuff. Also, he sometimes is an asshole, so there’s that. 

Aislinn comes back, and they’re just getting ready to settle at one of the tables to work when Quentin sees Mike of all people standing off to the side. “Hi, Mike, everything all right?” 

“Sure, I just got a little turned around. Remind me where the Cottage is?”

“Uh, it’s —” Quentin starts to point, but stops when he sees Eliot and Margo coming into view. Before he can wave them over or tell Mike or do anything a blur of motion at the corner of his eye makes him stumble back and —

Mike is coming at him with a knife? 

Then Penny’s there, grabbing Mike and knocking him to the ground. Quentin starts a spell but he doesn’t want to hit Penny, Alice seems to be having the same problem —

He can hear Eliot and Margo shouting — 

Penny’s on the ground and Mike is coming back up — 

The knife flies into the air —

“No!” Mike yells and gestures, the knife exploding close enough to Eliot and Margo that they’re both thrown off their feet by the blast. Quentin and Alice both cast but Mike dodges, smiling a terrible smile. “Clever children but not clever enough,” Mike says in a voice that doesn’t match his, that sounds British but also weirdly like  _ Eliza’s  _ accent in particular — 

“I don’t need a knife, I just liked it,” Mike says and his hand slashes through the air just as a snarl echoes in Quentin’s ears and a fucking — 

A  _ leopard  _ leaps out from where he thinks Aislinn was, pinning Mike to the ground but… but…

Alice is on her knees next to Penny but she’s the one who calls, “Quentin!” with so much alarm in her voice that he looks down as his knees inexplicably buckle… 

_ Oh. _

Quentin’s only clear thought on seeing the gash in his chest is that it doesn’t really hurt. And that when he falls backward, the sky is really blue. In Fillory, the books say the sky shimmers like a blue opal. It almost looks like that here and now… 

Someone’s calling his name. Someone’s hands are pressing down on him and it — 

—  _ Hurts  _ —

Everything goes black and silent. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter! Or, for the RP inclined, cardtricksandminormendings.tumblr.com!


	4. Now Here Is A Riddle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Mike's attack, Eliot is left reeling, Margo is trying to hold things together, and both of them have a lot of questions. Meanwhile, Quentin finds answers inside his own mind that he didn't even know he was looking for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope this update finds you well! 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include dealing with the aftermath of violence and injury, as well as canonical character death (though not entirely canonical causes) from episode 1.08. There is also discussion of Quentin's suicide in 4.13 and his general suicidal ideation, and Eliot beginning to spiral as in s1 canon.
> 
> This chapter is the one most connected to the larger series, and those who have read it will recognize a lot of Quentin's second scene from _Till We Reach the Circle's End._
> 
> As ever, thanks to Maii for betaing and my friends in two servers for the encouragement!

There’s some mistake. There  _ has _ to be some mistake. 

Eliot is kneeling on the grass, his hands pressed to a bleeding gash in Quentin’s chest while Margo slaps at Quentin’s face, trying to make him wake up. Penny is on the ground too, Alice trying to stop  _ him  _ from bleeding, and meanwhile there is a  _ fucking leopard _ keeping Mike pinned to the grass. Alice is also yelling for help, and yelling at — at Margo? — about going to get someone.

Quentin’s blood is leaking out between Eliot’s fingers. Mike did this to Quentin less than two hours after Eliot took him to bed and —

_ There has to be some mistake _ . This can’t be happening. Not like this. Eliot stares at Mike’s weakly kicking feet, stares at Quentin’s closed eyes, and he just keeps thinking that this can’t be happening. It can’t. 

Someone must go for help, or maybe someone else saw. Eliot doesn’t know because his hearing seems to be fading out like he’s underwater. He doesn’t know if Margo left, or Alice did, all he knows is there are hands pulling Q away from him. “No — he’s gonna bleed out — I can’t —” Eliot starts to say, but then he recognizes Lipson and he realizes the people pulling at Q are people who can do more than he can. 

So Eliot stumbles back, in time to see Dean Fogg wrapping Mike up in some kind of spell that holds him immobile and floating. “There’s got to be a mistake,” Eliot thinks again — no, wait. He said that out loud this time. “Mike, he wouldn’t… why is there a fucking leopard, what the fuck —”

“That’s my sister,” says someone Eliot doesn’t really know. He vaguely thinks he remembers seeing her with Quentin going through the Cottage’s little library, but all he recognizes — all he really noticed at the time — is the sleek jade green hair. “And she says there’s something wrong with the guy you’ve got there. Two minds in one body?” 

“You can communicate with her in this form?” Fogg asks briskly as he and another teacher who Eliot actually doesn’t know lead Mike away, the leopard trotting behind them and the green-haired woman hurrying to catch up. Eliot doesn’t hear any more of that conversation, and he just stays where he is, kneeling on the grass, staring at where blood has turned it red. 

Quentin’s blood, on the grass and on Eliot’s hands. Blood against the yellow paint of a school bus, and he didn’t do this directly but there’s — there’s —

“Eliot?” 

Eliot blinks and Margo is there, Alice is behind her and there’s blood on her hands too. Penny’s blood on Alice’s hands, Quentin’s blood on Eliot’s, except both are on his hands, aren’t they? He’s the one who Mike went to, the one who brought him closer and closer, this is — 

_ Two minds in one body.  _

Was it ever even Mike? And if it wasn’t, then… then… 

“El, come on. We’ve gotta get cleaned up, Lipson won’t let us into the infirmary like this,” Margo says, and she takes his hands — she shouldn’t, she’ll get blood on her hands. 

But he can’t stop her. He can’t  _ think _ . 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


In a crisis, Margo likes having things to do. It gives her something to focus on, something to think about. Right now, she is focusing on getting Eliot and Alice back to the Cottage to clean up so they can go to the infirmary. 

Yes, Alice too. More to focus on is better at a time like this, it helps Margo keep herself calm, and also… Alice might not want to be her friend but this is their fucking mess, it’s all of theirs. It’s that fucking Beast attacking the first-year classroom all over again except this time the bad guy fucking went honeypot on _ Eliot _ first, and that means… 

Margo doesn’t know what it means, except that whatever the fuck is going on, if it’s connected to what happened earlier this year — and that makes more sense than assuming there’s two completely unrelated homicidal fucks targeting specific first years — it’s not just the first years in the line of fire, is it? It’s her and Eliot, at least, which means Margo is going to keep an eye on everyone involved. Which means making sure Alice Quinn has a grip on herself as well as getting Eliot through his shock.

Because at some point, they’re going to have to figure this shit. But later. Once Penny and Quentin —  _ fuck  _ — are all right. Because obviously Lipson is going to make sure of that, isn’t she?

OK, maybe Margo isn’t entirely OK either. So she leaves Eliot washing his hands in his little attached bathroom — one reason El nabbed the attic room midway through last year, and actually Margo uses it more than she uses the communal one too. She leaves Eliot there and sits on Eliot’s bed, listening to the water run in the sink and fisting her hands in her lap. 

She knew something was wrong. She knew it, and she didn’t do  _ shit _ . And now Quentin was left bleeding out on the fucking grass and Eliot’s staring at everything like he can’t see any of it, lost in his own head, and nothing is all right at all. 

Margo closes her eyes and thinks about waking up with her feet in the surf, staring up at the Ibiza sky. If only she could remember what she’d seen, more than just vague impressions, then… Then what? Would it matter? How the fuck can she possibly know?

She can’t know. That’s the truth. But what she does know is that her best friend is a wreck, and their newly acquired boy is in the infirmary, seriously hurt. She knows that Eliot’s annoying boyfriend is actually a fucking homicidal maniac who tried to kill Q and hurt that Traveler guy Penny in the process, and does that make Penny and Alice Quinn adjacent to her and Eliot and Q now? Because this is the second or third time all three first-years were in a crisis together, so… 

Margo doesn’t know that either. 

So instead of trying to figure out the big picture, she bullies Eliot into a new shirt and vest because the ones he’s wearing have blood on them, and then they go downstairs. Margo checks for Alice because of that vague sense that they’re all in this shit together whether they want to be or not. But Alice apparently either disagrees or didn’t have the patience to wait, because she’s not in her room and Todd says she left. 

“What’s going on?” he asks, all wide-eyed curiosity.

“Not now, Todd,” Margo says briskly. It’ll be all over campus soon enough, no one knows how the gossip mill works better than she does — except maybe Chryssa over at the Castle — but Margo will be damned if anyone finds out anything from her. Not this time. 

At the infirmary, Alice Quinn is sitting in the waiting area, and she scrambles to her feet when she sees Margo and Eliot. “No one knows anything yet,” she says, hands twisting in front of her. “They’re both still in surgery, Lipson was furious when she found out the knife that he used on Penny got destroyed, and Quentin… magical wounds are harder to treat, but that’s all they said.”

“Do they know why?” Eliot’s voice is muffled; he’s half-collapsed in one of the chairs with his head in his hands. “Why did Mike do this?” 

“I think… I think they think it wasn’t really Mike,” Alice says carefully, pointing down the hallway to where Dean Fogg is talking to a chick with short blue hair wearing nothing, as far as Margo can see, but a carefully well-fastened knee-length coat. “At least that’s what Aislinn says.”

“Why is she only wearing a coat? I mean, more power to her and all that shit, but a hospital doesn’t seem like the time or place,” Margo says. She’s been known to wear less, openly and comfortably in public, but in a  _ hospital _ ? Seems like a bad idea on multiple levels.

“She was the leopard. Apparently shifting like she did, however she was able to do it just on command like that, she lost her clothes when she came back. Her sister gave her the coat before she left to do… whatever she was doing, and Aislinn stayed to give Fogg and Lipson as much information as she could.” 

“What do you mean, she said it wasn’t really Mike?” Eliot asks, and he hasn’t moved. Alice looks at him, then back at Margo like she’s not sure what to make of Eliot so obviously distressed, but then she clears her throat. 

“The Morgan twins are psychics. Penny —” Alice’s face crumples for a moment but then she sucks in a breath and she’s her usual prickly self again, on the outside at least. Margo can respect that choice. “Penny’s pretty powerful but a lot of his power is in traveling or astral projecting. He can go into people’s minds and he can hear surface thoughts, but the twins are… Quentin would probably make an X-Men reference, or something like that? Anyway, they’re strong, really strong. The things they did during the psychic tests at South were… Anyway, she sensed something. Some other mind is present in Mike’s body.” 

“The question is, when was he possessed,” comes a new voice, which turns out to be Aislinn Morgan, and yep, this close there’s just enough gap between the coat buttons to confirm that she really is not wearing anything else. 

“What is that supposed to mean?” Eliot says hoarsely, and he’s looking up again now, glaring at Aislinn Morgan with red-rimmed eyes. There’s no other trace of tears, but it would be like Eliot to magic away what he could. 

“It means that I couldn’t tell when the possession happened.” 

“So, what, it’s possible the guy I dated doesn’t exist, that I’ve been —” 

“Eliot, we don’t have to do this right now,” Margo says quickly, because they still don’t know whether Quentin’s going to be all right, and she doesn’t know how much Eliot can take in one day.

“Bambi, I need to know,” Eliot says flatly, and he seems… more solid, all of a sudden. Margo doesn’t trust it, but short of dragging Aislinn Morgan out by her short blue hair, what exactly is she supposed to do? 

“You’d have to ask him,” Aislinn Morgan says. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry to be bringing even more bad news. They took him to one of the Clean Rooms, I know that much. My sister and I know someone who’s an expert at possessions, Fogg may or may not call because Cole’s a hedge, but we gave him the number. Hopefully, one way or another they get to the bottom of this.” 

She sighs. “Quentin is my friend too, and I don’t know Penny very well but I respect him. I want everything to be all right too, you know. Excuse me, I need to go find clothes.” 

“How did you transform?” Alice asks as Aislinn turns to go. She looks back with a faint smile, pulling up her left sleeve to show a tattooed leopard twining around her forearm. 

“Old family magic.”

“You’re a hedge too,” Margo says, and she’d always thought most hedges scrabbled for crumbs, but that is not a crumb. “That’s not classical shit.” 

“No, it isn’t. Strictly speaking, it’s not hedge as you know the term either. But that’s a longer story than I think you’re up for today, and definitely longer than I’m up for without pants. So, if you’ll excuse me.” 

This time, none of them stop her.

Margo half expects Eliot to jump up and go to the Clean Rooms to get his answers about Mike, but instead he just slumps back in his chair, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Part of Margo wants to do the same thing, or curl up in the corner of the little couch. Because she wants to do these things, she sits up straight with her palms pressed flat against her thighs instead. Alice, maybe thinking along the same lines, perches on another chair, her hands clenched together in her lap.

“So, you and Penny?” Margo asks, to distract both of them. Alice’s eyes flick to her, then away, then settle on her. 

“Not really. It’s just — South was hard on both of us, and then we were put together in study group. We bonded. But we’re not hooking up if that’s what you mean.” 

“No shame in it if you are, kitty-cat,” Margo says. “He’s cute. But, I get what you’re saying,” she adds before Alice can get all snippy, because while a fight might feel good, Margo’s experience of Alice Quinn is that she’ll just go all Ice Queen (and not in the fun literal way Margo can), and that won’t be distracting at all. 

“I don’t have many friends,” Alice says, voice clipped. “And both of them are in operating rooms right now, after I’ve barely been speaking to one of them. Even if I had an important reason, this is not exactly —” She breaks off, shaking her head, and it’s impossible not to remember that Brakebills killed this girl’s brother too, and  _ fuck  _ the whole ‘magic is not unlikely to kill you’ shit anyway. 

Margo could point out that  _ she  _ tried to be Alice’s friend, that both she and Eliot did — except that the second time was… less than genuine, and Margo’s fairly sure Alice knows that. Before she can come up with the right response, though, Eliot gets up abruptly. “I have to know. I can’t just sit here. You’ll stay, right, Margo? You’ll be here if — if Q —” 

Margo had actually been about to offer to go with Eliot, and part of her wants to insist on that, because Alice is here, and she apparently cares about Quentin, but… But Eliot is asking her to do it. And he’s going to have a hard enough time convincing Fogg to let him in to see Mike, much less the both of them. 

“I’ll stay,” she says with a nod, and then he’s gone. And she knows what to say to Alice, turning back to her with a mirthless smile. “I only have two  _ close  _ friends myself. One of them’s in the OR and one’s this close to a fucking breakdown.” 

“That’s Brakebills for you, isn’t it?” Alice asks bitterly. 

“Sometimes I daydream about torching the place,” Margo agrees, almost companionably, and then neither of them say anything else, but wait in silence. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“Look, I just need to see him, please,” Eliot says to Fogg, and he knows he’s pleading. Maybe on another day that would be embarrassing, but not today.  _ Not today.  _

He washed his hands over and over, but his nailbeds are still stained here and there with Quentin’s blood. He has a mark on his collarbone just hidden by his shirt that Mike left there right before he — 

He needs to understand. 

“Despite what Miss Morgan claims, there is no evidence of possession,” Fogg says. “You will have to accept that you made an unfortunate dating choice. It happens to everyone, Eliot.”

“Then I need to understand  _ that _ ,” Eliot says, barely keeping hold of himself. “Either way, he can’t escape from there, can he? He can’t hurt me, I can’t hurt him inside that room. So just — please. Before you do whatever it is you plan to do, let me talk to him.”

“You might as well allow it, Henry. Perhaps it’ll even glean some new information.” 

Eliot turns around at the unfamiliar, British voice, only to find that actually, the woman is vaguely familiar. He’s never seen her in person, but he has seen rough sketches of her when hanging out with Quentin. “You’re Eliza. The — the Specialist that told Quentin he had a second chance,” Eliot says, because he’d asked who she was and Quentin had told him. 

“Yes, I am. Henry, we need to talk.” 

And so Fogg lets Eliot in to see Mike, while he goes down the hall with Eliza the Specialist. If Eliot could think beyond Mike in the next room and Quentin on an operating table, beyond a knife and a slashing hand and blood, he’d be suspicious, or at least curious. Because Quentin’s said a few things about this woman, about the weirdnesses around her, and why is a Specialist here helping figure out what’s gone wrong? 

But Eliot just — doesn’t have the space in his mind for that as he goes inside the Clean Room to where Mike is cuffed hands and feet to a chair. 

“Who are you? Did Henry send you?” Mike asks, eyes showing too much white in his panic. Eliot swallows hard, and makes himself ask. 

“You don’t know me at all, do you? You know, it’s funny, I was nervous today, I had a dinner planned, with my two closest friends and my boyfriend. Only, uh, well, here we are.” 

“Look, I’m sorry, but no,” Mike says, and fuck, even his voice is different somehow, Eliot can’t put words to it but even though the accent is the same, the face is the same, something is just  _ different  _ now. 

“No. It’s — not for you to be sorry,” Eliot says. He takes a deep breath, stands up straighter, and leaves the room. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but he can’t stand there in front of the man he thought he was falling in love with when the Mike he knows never actually existed. 

But why? Why did this happen? If Mike was possessed why did someone do that? That’s what Eliot can’t understand, that’s the answer he only now realizes he wants, and might not ever be able to get. Why did someone seduce him under false pretenses? Especially since — he’s not sure, exactly, if Quentin was the original target or if Penny was, the first attack happened so fast. But clearly Eliot himself wasn’t the first target for violence, if he was on the hit list at all, so why use him? 

As long as he’s trying to make this make sense he can stay calm. And it occurs to Eliot then that Eliza the Specialist, whoever she is, seems to show up when shit gets weird. According to Quentin, she was there the day of his exam, when his Yale interview instead became him and the hedge bitch finding the interviewer’s dead body. Quentin had said this Eliza was one of the paramedics. 

Quentin had also said something about a lost Fillory manuscript, but he’d been wine drunk and rambly — well, more than usual — with it, so the details there are fuzzy. But what Eliot does know is that, logically, this has something to do with the Beast that attacked the first years. So when he leaves, he does his best to walk very quietly, stopping at the corner just close enough to hear —

“Quentin is crucial, but Penny is also important. If we lose Quentin, everything resets again, but Penny is —”

“This is your mess, Eliza. So clean it up, and then get the hell away from my university.” 

“Except it is not just my mess anymore. I am no longer the only one affecting the timeline. As I told you, this is no longer the fortieth time loop. We have somehow splintered off into a forty-first. Did that Russian you keep in Antarctica tell you anything?” 

“There’s a spell he’s working on. He hasn’t completed it yet, but he claims he’s close. He estimates that the spell was cast three, four years from now, though he didn’t specify what made him think so. He calls it a timeshare spell. A person essentially swaps their consciousness with a past or future self. It seems that Quentin returned to South needing an incorporate bond. Mayakovsky doesn’t know why, or why his future self was inaccessible, only that the Quentin he interacted with for several hours at South was from the future. Presumably, the Quentin of this time period knows nothing.” 

“And if he dies, it won’t matter. I’ll have to reset everything. Damn it. I had hoped it was some third party, something predictable. I should have known Quentin was involved somehow. Still, that timeframe suggests that in Timeline 40 they succeeded, which means that we’re on the right track, or at least we were. If I could make contact...” 

“I don’t care. Clean it up, and then don’t come back,” Fogg snaps, and Eliot hears footsteps, first a heavier tread and then a lighter one. 

Eliot stays against the wall until he’s sure they’ve both gone, and then he heads down the hallway himself. What he’s heard… It’s important, probably, but it doesn’t give him any of the answers he needs. He still doesn’t know who Mike — the Mike he knew — really is, he doesn’t know why him, why _ anything _ . Except that apparently something will be ‘reset’ if Quentin dies. The timeline, maybe, from what Eliza the Specialist said, and she also said forty-one timeloops.  _ Forty-one. _

But things will start over again if Quentin dies. Which means that ‘Mike’ was definitely targeting Quentin. Which means that he pursued Eliot to get closer to Quentin. Which means that Eliot was used to get one of the only people he actually cares about killed. 

And he still doesn’t know if ‘Mike’ succeeded, because he took off like a fucking coward.

God. He has to go back.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“Both of your friends are very lucky,” Lipson announces. “They’re both in recovery now. We’ll be keeping Quentin unconscious for a few days — his injuries were more significant and it’s the best way for him to heal. Penny should be waking up in the next few hours.” 

“You didn’t need the knife Mike used after all?” Alice asks. Margo, who didn’t know anything about them needing the knife, remembers Eliot’s hand snapping up as he tried to get the knife in question, and Mike destroying it because… why? 

“No, the wound turned out to be easy to treat,” Lipson says casually, then turns to go. 

“Hang on, what rooms are they in?” Margo asks. Before Lipson can tell them, running footsteps make Margo turn to see Eliot. “Hey,” she says, forgetting Lipson as she goes over to him. “He’s gonna be all right. Are you… Mike…” 

“Not Mike. Whoever he was. I have things to — but not now. Can we see Q?” 

“I was about to give you room numbers,” Lipson says sarcastically, as if she hadn’t almost forgotten to do that entirely. But then she actually gives them the relevant room numbers — Penny and Quentin are actually next door to each other, which means that with the glass walls Margo can actually see Alice settling in the chair next to Penny’s bed even as she sits in the chair next to Quentin’s. 

There’s another chair, but Eliot doesn't sit down, just shuts the door and paces, keeping his gaze averted from the bed. Which, all right, Margo’s kind of been doing that too, and she doesn’t have time to be a fucking coward. So she braces herself and looks. 

It… could be worse. She’s seen Quentin napping and he’s usually curled in a little ball, not lying flat on his back, and she doesn’t think she’s ever seen him so still, but if not for that and the fact that he’s almost as pale as the damn hospital bedding, she’d think he really was just asleep. She looks over at Eliot then, watches him watch the hallway. 

“He’s gonna be all right, El,” Margo says quietly. She doesn’t know if he’s blaming himself or what, which is fucking stupid, but… 

“He was targeting Quentin all along,” Eliot says without turning around. “I heard some things — not enough, and I don’t want to talk about it here, just in case. But I know this much. It’s about the Beast, and it’s about Quentin. Which means I got fucking seduced and  _ used  _ so one of my only friends could end up  _ dead _ .” 

The little wheelie table beside the bed rattles slightly. So do both the chairs. Both, which means Eliot is rattling Margo’s chair despite the fact that she is  _ sitting in it.  _ “El, honey, take a breath, you’re shaking the room.”

Eliot presses his palms to the glass, and Margo isn’t sure that’s the best idea, but everything does stop shaking, so there’s that, at least. “When I went to the Clean Rooms, Fogg was outside with a woman. Do you remember Quentin telling us about the Specialist, that day at the barbecue, after he didn’t get expelled?” 

“Dimly,” Margo says. She’d been several drinks and a nice mood-altering candy in by the time a wine-drunk Quentin had finally explained what happened to keep him from expulsion, but she mostly remembers being amused by Quentin’s talking with his hands — reminded her of an old school friend’s very Italian grandma — and by how obviously  _ fond  _ Eliot already was of him. But, when she thinks about it… 

She reaches out, brushing Quentin’s hair back off his face. He doesn’t really move, but his face twitches slightly like he can feel it, and it’s weirdly a relief to see even that tiny response. His eyes look like they’re moving under his closed eyelids, like he’s dreaming. Which makes sense because he’s in a spelled sleep, not in a coma.

She looks back up at Eliot. “Didn’t he say she was also the paramedic when the Yale interview guy turned up dead?” 

“Yeah. Eliza the Specialist. She was talking to Fogg, and… Like I said, Margo, I don’t want to say everything here, I don’t know what will happen if Fogg knows I heard any of this, and given Brakebills’ propensity for fucking with people’s memories, I’d rather not find out. But this — all of this was about _ killing Quentin _ , and from what I heard Penny wasn’t the target but getting him was a useful bonus rather than just collateral damage. You were right about Mike all along, Bambi. He wasn’t trustworthy.” 

Oh shit. 

Now. Margo Hanson likes to be right. She fucking  _ loves _ it, in fact, and is not above an ‘I told you so’ when the opportunity presents itself. But this… No. Fucking no. “Eliot, no,” she says, getting up and grabbing Eliot’s hands, making him look at her. “I thought he was maybe in the closet with a wife tucked away somewhere, or some other kind of normal-asshole shady bullshit. Nothing like this, and it was not your fault. And when Q wakes up, he’s gonna say the same thing.” 

Or at least, he’d  _ better _ , but Margo thinks she knows their nerd well enough to say that he will.

Eliot shakes his head, but what he would have argued Margo never knows because there’s a quiet knock on the open door. They both look over to see a redheaded guy Margo vaguely remembers from the Trials — they’d given him a trowel and orders to catch a fish, she thinks — standing in the doorway. He looks at Quentin and his whole face falls. 

From the way Eliot tenses beside her, Margo guesses this is Gabriel even before he says, “Hi, I’m Gabriel, one of Q’s friends. I don’t mean to interrupt but I wanted to see him…” 

“We could sit with him for a bit,” says another voice from behind Gabriel, and it turns out to be Aislinn Morgan, wearing clothes again and coming up to take Gabriel’s hand. “If you guys need some time. I know who you are, my sister and I can talk to each other mind to mind so if anything changes we can get you here fast?” 

And — Margo knows Quentin is fond of his little crew of study buddies. She knows he’s fucking Gabriel. She still wouldn’t usually want to leave one of her people under someone else’s eye. But she literally saw Aislinn take down Mike, saving… probably all of them, actually, because it’s not unreasonable to think Mike would have taken them all out to avoid having witnesses. 

Anyway. Margo thinks maybe she can trust blue-haired leopard girl a little. And she needs to get Eliot somewhere private so they can discuss just what the fuck is going on here. “OK. But the second something happens, you get on your twin-magic telephone and get us here, that clear?” 

“Crystal.” 

So Margo tows Eliot back to the Cottage almost exactly as she’d gotten him to the infirmary, and she resolutely ignores that him being this —  _ cooperative _ is fucking terrifying. She gets them upstairs and into her room, because now she remembers the lazy just-fucked gleam in his eyes earlier and the clean but rumpled sheets on his bed upstairs. _ Fuck _ . She probably should have realized that earlier but Eliot has a private bathroom and Margo technically does not, so when washing off blood was involved… 

Right. It doesn’t matter, she’s paying better attention now. “Eliot, what’s going on? What did you hear?” 

Eliot is pacing again, prowling across her floor like an overgrown cat. He doesn’t even look up when she talks to him, staring down at the floor like it holds all the answers to the universe. “Horomancy, apparently,” he says, shaking his head. “This Eliza, she was talking about time loops and given Fogg called it ‘her mess’ I’m guessing maybe she made them? Anyway, she said this is the forty-first timeline, that it was supposed to be the fortieth but we splintered off somehow.”

That… is not what Margo had expected, not in the slightest. “Wait, what?” 

Eliot finally looks up at her, raking a hand through his hair so that what’s left of his earlier careful styling falls apart. “Apparently, whatever she’s doing, it’s tied somehow to Quentin. If he dies, the loop resets again. I don’t know why, I didn’t get that.” 

“Knowing Q, sell it to him right and Coldwater Version One probably volunteered,” Margo mutters, thinking of the boy who wanted to know why magic couldn’t run on love and who tried to make it cure cancer, who rumor said had been there with Alice when her Niffin brother got boxed. “Especially if this is connected to the whole Fillory is real revelation he dropped on me during the Trials, and it probably is because I’m guessing this all comes back to the Beast somehow?” 

Eliot huffs a sound like a terrible twisted cousin to a laugh. “I don’t know. I figure as much but I didn’t hear that. What I do know is, Fogg called this Eliza’s mess to clean up and he sounded pissed. Also, whatever she’s doing, Timeline 40’s group — presumably Quentin, Alice, and Penny, and I’m guessing us because of Q — succeeded at what she wants. Or she thinks so, because that whole thing Q was talking about at South? Not the foxes, the memory shit. That wasn’t Mayakovsky, that was Quentin himself, from the future of this other timeline, swapping mental places with our Q so he could get some kind of spell of Mayakovsky.” 

Eliot stops, swallowing hard. “And Mike didn’t recognize me. Which means he was possessed, by someone working for the Beast, I guess. But it means I was dating, I was having sex with someone who wasn’t in control of their own body and I —” 

“Hey. That is not your fault. You were lied to, Eliot. Mike is — the actual Mike, OK, he’s not the bad guy, but neither are you. You did not do anything wrong.” 

Eliot squeezes his eyes shut, taking a deep breath. “Right. OK. No, you’re right. So we need to figure out who the fuck is playing games with our lives, and why.” 

Margo agrees with that. And she should be relieved that Eliot listened to her, but why does she have the sinking suspicion he  _ didn’t _ , at all?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot and Margo still go to class, or at least they tell Lipson so because she shows up to kick them out of Quentin’s room. Next door, Alice is being kicked out of Penny’s, so at least they’re all in the same boat. Absently, Eliot wonders if they should fill Alice in. He glances at Margo questioningly and she nods, wrapping an arm around Alice’s shoulders. 

“Can I… help you?” Alice says, bewildered. 

“We need to talk, kitty cat. It’s important. More important than one day of classes, especially for a resident brainiac like you. El, you coming?” 

“No,” Eliot says quietly. “I have an errand to run. Eliza, remember?”

“Right,” Margo says, steering Alice in the opposite direction from Eliot, who is heading back to the Cottage. He knows that Eliza is likely to be somewhere around the Brakebills campus, ‘cleaning up her mess,’ whatever that actually means. Of course, finding one person here is tricky, but there’s a spell for that. Eliot’s sure it has a proper name, but he learned it from a pair of hedges in Pittsburgh when he was eighteen and hitchhiking his way across the country to New York, and they just called it the Marco Polo spell. 

(He’s pretty sure Jack and Anne were not only hedges but thieves of some kind or another, but it’s not his business.)

The Marco Polo spell gets its name, obviously, from the Marco Polo game, though Eliot thinks it works just as well if you call it the hot-and-cold spell. The trick is to cast the spell on a small object, ideally associated with the person you’re looking for. It will warm in your hand if you’re close, and go cold if you’re moving further away. 

Now, Eliot obviously doesn’t have anything connected to Eliza. Quentin, on the other hand, just might. Normally, there’s lines of personal boundaries even Eliot doesn’t cross, but this is something of an emergency, in his opinion. So he lets himself into Quentin’s room, past the gentle fizz of the wards he and Margo helped Quentin put up, wards keyed to let a handful of people by. Eliot is one of them, of course.

Quentin’s bed is only half-made, heathen that he is, an extra blanket or two tucked under the comforter to make what seems to be a comfy warm nest of a bed. It looks like Quentin could climb back in for a nap at any moment, and Eliot has to turn away sharply, blinking. Really, he needs to show Quentin that anti-dust spell; it’s far too dusty in here, don’t his eyes water? 

Quentin’s little desk space is a chaotic mess of notes and textbooks, but after flipping through a few of the notebooks, Eliot finds what he’s looking for. A sketch of Eliza the Specialist in the center of the page, little notes scribbled around her.  _ Who are you? What do you know about me, the Beast? Why help me?  _

Carefully, Eliot tears out the page, but then he notices another sketch on the other side. A young girl in old-fashioned clothes.  _ Why am I dreaming of Jane Chatwin? What does she have to do with this? Was it the Beast tricking me? _

Huh. Eliot doesn’t understand what that’s about, but when he looks back at the drawing of Eliza, he can’t help but notice that the girl and the woman have eyes exactly the same shape. That’s weird, but it probably doesn’t mean much given the girl is a creation of Quentin’s dreams, right? Anyway, it hardly matters. If Eliza is somehow related to the Chatwins, that isn’t one of the answers Eliot needs. He wants to know what she’s doing and what her goal is. If she’s somehow related to the heroes of a kids’ fantasy series, that’s probably her  _ motive _ , but Eliot doesn’t actually give a fuck about that. 

Good intentions and the road to hell, and all that. 

The paper warms in his hands over in the gardens that surround the museum and the art buildings — one is a gallery and one is for art-based magic classes. Eliot turns a corner and finds Eliza the Specialist looking down at a rosebush like it holds all the answers. It occurs to Eliot that maybe pulling the strings isn’t enough to know everything. 

It occurs to him that he does not fucking care. He was halfway to falling in love with a person who didn’t exist, someone he cares about very much is lying unconscious in a hospital bed, and somehow it all comes back to the way this woman  _ fucked with time _ for unknown purposes. 

“Is the thing possessing Mike working for the Beast?” he asks without bothering to introduce himself. 

Eliza looks up, surprise on her face, but only for a moment. “Hello, Eliot. I suppose with Quentin incapacitated I should have expected you. You did see me, after all.” 

“I heard you too. Forty timelines, and we’re a splinter to make forty-one? What’s the point, and why is Quentin the trigger for it? If you’re playing games with our lives, we deserve to know why.” 

“I did tell you outright a time or two,” Eliza says, dark eyes thoughtful as she studies him. “Invariably, the result was that you all charged in guns blazing and died quite rapidly. I learned from that not to be so forthcoming. I can’t tell you anything that will make you feel better, Eliot.” She turns to go and Eliot thinks no, no fucking way, and it’s just like it was when he was fourteen, this power simmering under his skin and there to respond to a thought. 

Except this time he’s not hurting anyone. He’s just… holding her in place, as he moves around so he’s facing her again. “No,” he says flatly. “You’re going to give me something, Eliza the Specialist. What is this all about? Why is the timeline going to reset if Q dies, why him?” 

“Oh, that,” Eliza says, voice trying for the same lightness but with a new tension in it. Good. “He made a deal with me, a loved one’s life for his help, and so I centered the spell around him. It’s really that simple, in fact.”

“Did you actually keep up your end of it?” Eliot asks, something aching inside him. Because that makes sense — Quentin would, Eliot suspects, do a lot of things to be the noble questing hero, but he doesn’t think he’d lock everyone into a repeating time loop. But if it was to save someone… Part of Eliot wants to ask who, yet another part is afraid to hear it, for some reason. 

Eliza looks at him, something unreadable on her face. “In a way. First change I made to the timelines, in fact. But he never had much joy of it for long. I suppose I should have expected this telekinetic handcuff or whatever you call this little spell. You really don’t take no for an answer. The last time I refused you, you robbed my house to get what you wanted. I should be glad you only want my words.” 

Eliot is viciously proud of his other self from whatever timeline. Good for him, not just accepting cryptic bullshit. “What is this about?” 

“Stopping the Beast, of course. Saving Fillory from him. And yourselves, because at this point even if I sent a different group of intrepid young magicians after him, he’s got you targeted now. Speaking of, tell Alice, if Penny’s wound sprouts vines, it wasn’t Jane’s doll that mattered in itself, it was what the doll meant.”

“What?” Eliot says. “Seriously, you can’t give me anything better than that?”

“I gave Quentin a manuscript for the sixth Fillory book. The answers are in there. Tell him that when he wakes up. I’m not going to give you more than that, Eliot, so you might as well let me go.” 

Eliot glares at her, but he releases the magic. As she turns, he can’t stop himself from asking one more thing. “Why me? Why target me for the whole honeypot scheme?”

Eliza looks back over her shoulder. “Because he thought it would take more time approaching one of the larger group as opposed to aiming right at Quentin, whose various affections are all fully engaged by now in any case. Always are, one way or another. And he knew you were… susceptible to a certain type, I’m afraid.” 

She doesn’t say anything else before she leaves, and Eliot doesn’t ask. So he was the target because he’s weak, with only two people he cares about who aren’t Eliot’s in the way Mike promised he’d be. Because Eliot doesn’t know what he really wants out of what he has, but somehow Mike pressed just enough of the right buttons —

Because Eliot is susceptible, which is to say gullible and fucking  _ weak _ . The details don’t matter here. He’s the problem, isn’t he?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


If anyone had asked, Quentin would have said he expected any more dreams of Jane to be like the others, in places that might have been Fillory and might not have been. The hallucination doesn’t count, and even then… 

Instead, he’s in the local library, in the town where he grew up, looking at himself and Julia bent over one of the Fillory books. He can’t tell which one from where he’s standing by the windows, across the room from them. They’re about twelve, he thinks, that awful year when Quentin’s parents divorced and Julia’s mother had her husband committed — he’s still in a locked ward even now. 

When, before puberty had really struck him, depression started to dig in, when Quentin’s first therapist had blamed it all on the divorce and refused to listen to anything else Quentin wanted to talk about, when he’d thought maybe this doctor would help.

When Julia’s mother told her “at least you won’t inherit David’s bullshit,” and David Wicker is Julia’s father, as blonde and blue-eyed as their mother or Julia’s older sisters. Julia doesn’t know, she’s said this the one and only time they talked about it hidden under Quentin’s bed. She doesn’t  _ know _ , because no one has actually said it. 

Quentin started believing that heroic sacrifice was beautiful when he was twelve, because life started feeling grey and it wasn’t because of his mother and no one believed him yet. At twelve, Julia looked in the mirror and knew how much she didn’t look like anyone in her family but did look like the man she saw only once, kissing her mother’s cheek at a party. 

It was a really fucking shitty year, being twelve, and that’s why they were in the library so often. Because Quentin’s house had been Julia’s refuge but now everything was wrong there too, and they were just old enough to walk to the library on their own so that was what they did instead. They found their safe spaces together, until Julia stopped understanding Quentin’s need for them, and Quentin let a stupid crush turn him too bitter to explain. 

He looks outside the window and it’s not what it should be, it’s a New York City back alley, the adult Quentin and Julia of a couple months ago, squared up to fight and Eliot behind them watching it like a play. Quentin shakes his head, and looks back at the children. 

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have separated you.” 

Quentin jumps, and turns to see Jane Chatwin beside him. Except… she’s older than she was, in the earlier dreams. His age, maybe, or close enough, wearing a tunic and breeches, cape and boots, like any Fillorian on a quest. Her crown is on her head, except, wait, no. No, it’s not her crown, it’s silver and the shape of it is… 

That’s Martin’s crown, Quentin realizes with a jolt, and this close he can see it’s not the smooth silver of the book description but textured like seastone or coral, he thinks, and with inlaid blue abalone… It’s more beautiful than he’d ever pictured, but it’s not  _ Jane’s crown, _ he never heard of her wearing her brother’s crown at all, much less as an adult in Fillory, none of this was in the books.

Or at least none of the published ones, Quentin thinks, and curses himself again for losing the manuscript of the sixth one.

Then what she says registers. “Wait, what do you mean?” 

Jane shakes her head with a little sigh. “I don’t have much time, Quentin. I’ve always known somewhere it was going to end badly for me, and so just in case… I told you that you had to go off the garden path, and you’ve managed to do that rather spectacularly, in ways not intended, but maybe it’ll work out. What I didn’t tell you is that Julia had to do the same. It was not lack of ability but necessity that kept her out of Brakebills.” 

“What?” Quentin asks, stomach knotting. He thinks of Julia at her party, so hopeful with her sparks. He’d dismissed it then because it had looked so small compared to the things they taught in class, because he’d believed Fogg, but — but now he knows Fogg lied to him. And of course it was a small spell, she’d been trawling the Internet for anything that was real, even a tiny thing.

After what she’d done to him, he should have realized capability couldn’t be why Brakebills wouldn’t have her, but by then he was angry —

But this is a dream. This is just his guilty conscience, right? 

“The Beast is coming,” Jane says, and Quentin turns to look at her — 

The world dissolves in golden flame, and Quentin falls to his knees on the carpet… which is no longer carpet but grass, and as he scrambles to his feet he realizes he’s alone, in his own backyard back in Jersey.

The sky is blue and yet full of golden stars that spin and spin over his head and then blink out — all but one that falls and falls to land on the grass except… When it lands, it’s a human silhouette in golden fire. Quentin blinks, backing up slowly, reminded of the Niffin that had once been Alice’s brother Charlie. 

Except that when the light fades, leaving only a person behind, Quentin finds that he’s facing himself.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“So it wasn’t Mayakovsky who messed with our memories,” Alice says once Margo’s explained everything Eliot told her except the details about Mike — all she said about Mike was that he was a tool of the Beast. 

Margo doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t like Alice fixating on the fact that she and Q weren’t  _ as  _ messed with as they’d believed. 

“No, but he did still basically roofie you both with fox hormones,” she points out. “Trust me, creepy old asshole is not any less terrible than you think he is.” 

“No, of course not, it’s just… I was the one casting magic,” Alice explains. “I could feel it when my head cleared, and when Q… I guess that must have been when he came back to his own body? Anyway, if it wasn’t Mayakovsky’s magic screwing with us and the time travel spell only affected Quentin then I must have cast a Memory Charm on myself.” 

“Why the fuck would you do that to yourself?” Margo asks. 

“Because I would want to preserve the timeline and prevent a paradox. But, if Future Quentin was from a different timeline, then there’s nothing to preserve. If I cast the charm on myself, maybe I can remove it. I would only have done it if he told me something that I thought wasn’t safe for me to know. It might help and it might not, but it can’t actually make things worse for us even if it is useless.” 

“No, if it’s useless, then there’s just no change from where we already are,” Margo says. “Little Doctor Who for me and that was never my  _ favorite  _ of the sci-fi options available, but hey. It can’t hurt.” 

For Margo’s own part, she’s starting to wonder about that shit she had at Encanto, the seeing-other-worlds stuff that helped make her so sure Mike was bad news. She can’t remember anything in any detail, but with this time loop shit, she’s beginning to wonder just what it was she saw. There’s no way to find out; she doesn’t trust the Naturalist students to come up with anything that potent without some kind of… trouble. Rumor has it there were a couple Naturalist Kids among the missing third-years who were capable of mixes that strong, but hadn’t  _ quite  _ gotten the knack of avoiding unpleasant side effects like the people who make stuff for Encanto can do.

And they’re probably dead, or at least irretrievably missing, so it’s not helpful anyway. So, failing a second shot at whatever she took and hope she remembers this time, Alice’s idea isn’t bad. When — if —  _ when  _ Quentin wakes up, they’ll have to sit him down and ask in detail what he remembers, see if there’s clues there. 

“Did Eliot know why it’s us?” Alice asks. “I mean, if Quentin made a deal to save someone…”

Margo shrugs. “Best guess is this bitch played Q to get what she wanted out of him and he probably figured he was the only one on the line. But she either knew all along or guessed real fucking quick she could loop the rest of us in, and now we’re all screwed if we don’t win this thing.”

Alice frowns. “I want to go check in at the infirmary, walk with me?” Since Margo kind of wants to do that herself, she nods, and they head off that way. Still, she’s got a feeling Alice is chewing on something, and almost asks, but decides to try and wait her out. 

“This all started because I tried to summon Charlie’s spirit. The book I used… I was working alone, but then I noticed a mark on Quentin’s hand that matched the mark on the book cover. I thought it was a message from Charlie, but Quentin went off like he does about Fillory. I mostly blew him off at the time because I didn’t care about a series of kids’ books, especially when I don’t even like fantasy, but… He said he had a dream of Jane Chatwin, and she did that to his hand in the dream somehow, except he thought it must have been a vision because he woke up with the symbol on his hand.”

Margo frowns. “OK, that’s just weird. Definitely suggests someone was setting you up. How’d Penny and the explosions chick get involved?” 

Alice frowns, looking away. “Penny was led there too, and Kady came along with him. I… know how Penny ended up there, he’s told me, but it’s his secret to tell.”

Margo could push, but she decides not to. “Sure, whatever. Point is, you guys were set up by someone who definitely wanted you, Q, and Penny doing it, and at least didn’t object to… Kady, you said? What happened to her anyway?” 

“I don’t know exactly. Something related to hedge connections going bad,” Alice says, shrugging. 

Margo remembers that Quentin’s old friend Julia is a hedge too. Eliot called her Julia the Hedge Bitch, in fact, when he filled Margo in about that hallucination stunt. It probably doesn’t mean anything, but at this point she’s not sure she’s ruling out anything. It feels like they suddenly landed in a cross between an urban fantasy book and some kind of thriller, and to be perfectly honest, she doesn’t like it. But hiding from it isn’t going to finish it, so here they are. 

She’s going to have to try not to end up paranoid.

At the infirmary, it looks like Penny’s awake and Alice makes a beeline for his room.  _ Not like that my ass, _ Margo thinks. If those two aren’t fucking, she suspects they will be soon enough. Not really her business, but she does like to be right. And it’s a little bit of a distraction from Quentin, who is still just… lying there. Margo knows it’s a healing sleep, a spell designed so that Quentin wakes up fully recovered from the blood loss and with his actual wound healed a lot more than Muggles can manage, if still not fully repaired. 

It’s just hard to remember that looking at your friend’s pale, still form in a hospital bed, that’s all.

One of Quentin’s study group friends is just leaving as Margo steps in — her name’s Kit, or maybe Kat, something along those lines. She left a book, a worn paperback copy of  _ So You Want To Be A Wizard. _ With nothing else to do, and needing to not just stare at Quentin, Margo picks it up and starts to read. Sure, she has her own well-hidden nerd tastes, but she never did get around to this series. 

It’s a useful distraction, at least.

“You’d like this lady’s concept of magic,” she tells Quentin at one point. “It sounds like our magic with all the calculations and shit, but made nicer —- wizards fight entropy, just like you said magic should run on love. Pretty idea, too bad it’s bullshit, but I get why your friend likes this book.”

“He can’t hear you, Margo,” Eliot drawls as he walks in, a particular looseness to his step and the way he drops into the other chair that… 

“Are you high?” Normally, there’s nothing wrong with that, but here and now it feels a little… tacky, even if Margo’s thinking about smoking up a little to help herself sleep tonight.

“No,” Eliot sighs. “Just a mug of that calming tea, you know, the red one?” 

Margo does know, actually — for a tea, it comes out almost a blood red, and she personally has never liked the bitterness under the spices in it. As far as she knows, Eliot doesn’t like it either, so for him to be drinking it, Eliza the Specialist must have really upset him. “What did that lady say to you?” 

Eliot sighs, tipping his head back. “Oh, you know, that I’m an easy honeypot target and this is all about fighting the Beast. Very spy novel, actually, so cliche.” 

“Eliot — ”

But before Margo can push for more questions, shit just goes to hell. First, doctors run into Penny’s room next door, Alice forced outside to stand in the hall, hands twisting in front of her. She looks over at them, takes a step their way. 

“Quentin! Someone get in here!” 

Margo looks back at Quentin when Eliot shouts, in time to see him seizing on the bed, his veins glowing golden under his skin. 

“What the fuck,” Margo says, staring. 

“Out! Now!” It’s not Lipson, who is with Penny, but one of the other healers who orders Eliot and Margo to leave as a team surrounds Quentin on the bed. Margo stumbles out, for once actually feeling unsteady on her high heels, Eliot just behind her. He’s holding her hand and she doesn’t remember which of them reached out, she only knows that they’re both holding on tight enough there may be bruises later. 

“What’s wrong with Quentin?” Alice asks from behind them, and Margo can only shake her head, because they don’t know. 

“What happened to Penny?” Margo asks, as much to distract herself as anything else. 

“The blade, it was — I read the Fillory books recently, for research. It must be the one… the one that causes vines?” 

“Shit, the Virgo Blade?” Margo asks without thinking. She had a replica of that once. “So you need to make a Penny doll and burn it so the vines won’t strangle his heart. At least that’s straightforward.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense. It implies a voodoo doll sort of thing but that’s not how image magic works.” 

“I don’t think Fillory follows our rules of magic, even having turned out to be real,” Margo says, and it’s a relief to have something to think about, something solid. She doesn’t know Penny well enough to be upset about him, even if she doesn’t mean him any harm, but still. She can’t help Quentin, and feeling useless sucks. 

“Maybe…” Alice says doubtfully. 

“It’s not the doll.” 

Alice and Margo both look at Eliot, who is still staring through the glass at the healers surrounding Quentin’s bed. He’s stopped seizing, but they’re still running their fucking tests. “El, honey, how do you know that?” Margo asks carefully. 

“Eliza. She said if Penny’s wound sprouted vines, that it wasn’t the doll, it was what the doll meant that made it work. Whatever that means.” 

“The doll was Jane’s favorite thing, the most important thing she had,” Margo says with a shrug, because everyone who’s read the books knows that. Wait. 

“I need to ask Penny what his most important possession is,” Alice says as the healers leave Penny’s room and she hurries back in. Margo can’t hear their conversation but it looks intense. Still, Alice leaves a little bit later, while Margo and Eliot are still waiting for news on Quentin — they took samples and are running tests, but they’re not letting any visitors back in the room. 

Margo watches Alice go and thinks it’s good that someone is making progress at least.

And then it turns out the healers don't know what's wrong. Quentin’s stable and they can sit with him again, after an hour of touch-and-go and two more while they ran their tests. But there are only two symptoms. Quentin’s mental presence has a weird echo to it that they can’t explain, and he’s slipped from a magicked sleep into a coma. Eliot takes the news with a pale, set face, the effects of the calming tea wiped out by adrenaline. 

“So there’s nothing you can do but wait?” Margo snaps, and the look the healer — Margo doesn't know his name — gives her is disdainful. 

“Magic doesn’t fix everything.” 

“No fucking shit,” Margo mutters as the healer leaves.

Eliot refuses to leave, after that, and Margo can’t say she’s surprised. Most of the time she stays too, for both her boys’ sakes. 

Late that first night, when they can put up an anti-eavesdropping ward, Eliot tells Margo what Eliza said, both of them holding one of Quentin’s hands. None of it is good news, and what scares Margo is she doesn’t have a fucking clue what to do now. 

Except to wait. And she  _ hates  _ waiting.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“Uh, what the fuck?” is all Quentin can think to say, faced with this counterpart of himself.

It’s him, but… not him. It’s not like looking at the memory version of himself at twelve, not at all. This other version is not someone Quentin’s ever been, his hair white and short, his eyes a strange golden color. And he looks… older, too. Not by a lot, just enough for his face to be a little sharper, a few more lines… 

Like the Alice from that strange hour or two at Brakebills South, Quentin realizes with a chill. Short hair, like the hair he’d had during those couple of hours. 

This white-haired counterpart looks as confused as Quentin feels, at least, so that’s something, but his eyes are… are… It’s not just his face that shows he’s a little older, _ it’s his eyes. _ His eyes are damn near ancient, it feels like, as if he remembers a lot more than just a couple extra years. 

(An image flashes into his mind, of a tiny cottage and pastel-colored tiles, there and gone in a moment and completely nonsensical.)

( _ What happened to you, _ Quentin wants to ask, and he sees shattered glass and golden sparks, which doesn’t make any sense either.)

“What are you, the Ghost of Christmas Future? I don’t even like Dickens,” he asks, crossing his arms and shifting uncomfortably. “Also, why do you look like a Targaryen with freaky eyes?”

“Ghost of Timelines Past,” White-Hair says, almost like he isn’t thinking about what he’s saying.

“Timelines? What are you talking about?” Quentin regrets the question almost immediately, because those tired golden eyes fix on him and he’s never actually seen that expression on his own face, a sudden terrible determination like he can’t imagine ever  _ feeling _ . Because it makes him nervous, he pushes on. “You know what happened at South, don’t you? Why Alice and I have such weird memories. We thought it was Mayakovsky, that’s when we figured out that his fox thing had been fucking with us the whole time…” 

“Wait, are you two not dating?” White-Hair asks, and even though they’re the same person, Quentin can’t read his features now.

“... No? No, we figured out that the fox thing made us do stuff we weren’t ready for and… it’s weird now.” Wouldn’t a figment of his imagination know that? What is going on?

“Oh boy. Well, OK, that’s already different, maybe my idea won’t work as well as I thought,” White-Hair says, more to himself than to Quentin. 

“What idea?” 

But he doesn’t get an answer. Just another question. 

“Tell me, how did you get here? I need to figure out where you are before I can figure out what to say next.”

When Quentin thinks about it, he can’t exactly remember. The last thing he remembers clearly is being in a new study group, one including Alice and Penny, talking to them when Aislinn left, but then… 

“Mike. Eliot’s boyfriend. He, he hurt me… I think he hurt me? Or I got hurt and he was there? I’m not sure which.” He can’t remember, why can’t he remember? “And then I was — it was another Jane dream, only she was an adult my age this time wearing questing clothes and Martin’s crown of all things… then everything turned to gold fire, then I was here. Then you showed up.” 

“Not only Martin’s crown,” White-Hair murmurs, and Quentin has another of those dizzying flashes, a cliff by the sea, a crown that looks like Martin’s being dropped into a fire. It doesn’t make sense, and he tries to shake it off. Apparently, White-Hair has the same idea in mind, because he takes a deep breath and says, “OK. Clearly this isn’t my timeline, I guess Alice was right about the risks of that timeshare spell… but that doesn’t matter. I might be able to help you. Sit down, and we’ll talk.” 

So they sit on the back porch steps, Quentin and his strange counterpart, and White-Hair proceeds to tell him the real story about the Beast, who he is, who Eliza is, what happens when they beat him. Quentin is still reeling from the revelations — Martin and Jane, forty different time loops, and Julia taking the Beast’s side, and Eliot as High King but picking him and Margo and Alice to rule with him, and — 

And oh God, Alice Niffining out? 

White-Hair is less forthcoming about what happens next. “If you can keep Julia on side, or figure out a way to do the Rhinemann Ultra without someone Niffining out, then… Honestly, I’m not sure how much of what happened to us will still happen. But off the top of my head… Don’t let anyone be a dick to the river god at the Torrent, Umber is hiding as a human with a ton of Fillory memorabilia, including the clock, up in Vancouver. Try to avoid him and Ember dying, especially try to avoid killing them —” 

“Wait, what?” Quentin interrupts.

“Ember was causing chaos in Fillory, he killed his brother, I killed him, the Old Gods got pissed and shut off magic. We got it back, but… If you have to do that, at the very last part of the quest, be careful. There’s this… castle, with a Monster held captive and with a guard. Don’t make any deals with her without checking with the others, don’t let anyone try to kill the Monster because it will not work.” 

“Most of this makes no fucking sense, you know,” Quentin says. 

“Yeah, I know. I’m trying to think of things that may still apply regardless of what changes, and most of those are things that would still fuck shit up if they happen… speaking of shit, maybe the Wellspring, no, you can’t do anything to stop that, but.” White-Hair’s mouth twists, and if his earlier determination had been terrible, this awful impersonation of a smile is much worse. 

“Do not, under any circumstances, trust or interact any more than necessary with the Library of the Neitherlands. They got Penny killed, and stopping one of them led to me committing suicide by taking bad guy out with me. At least I know my friends are better off for it.” 

The revelation that Penny of Timeline 40 is dead is more shocking a jolt than Quentin might have thought — he doesn’t like the guy, but Penny did save his life once, it’s — 

But then it registers what his own fate was in this other timeline and Quentin freezes. His worst nightmare when he’s as healthy as he gets, his dearest wish when things are terrible, the thing that sometimes seems, healthy or sick or in between, like the only way things will end. “So we’re right? When it’s at the worst, when we think it would be better for everyone if we died, that’s true? We tried, and tried, that’s why we were in Midtown before Brakebills, but we shouldn’t have tried? Is that  _ it _ ?” 

White-Hair hesitates, then shrugs. “For me, maybe. Really, it was more  _ how  _ I died than  _ that  _ I died, but…” 

_ But still, they were better off, _ Quentin thinks, bitter. If that’s true, then what the fuck is he even fighting for? “Anyway. To sum it up, there are forty of these loops? And why can’t you tell me more than what you just did?” 

White-Hair shrugs. “Forty-one, with you. Alice and I created you by mistake, unless I’m wrong. Sorry. But I can’t say much because you’re already on a different path than me. What I know matters is that Eliza is Jane Chatwin, she’s been resetting the timeline every time we die, and Fogg knows all about it. I also know that Mike’s a bad guy, he’s being possessed by the Beast, you need to make up with Julia and try to get her away from the hedges —- though she might have met Kady by now, Kady should come too —- and you should look into making the Rhinemann Ultra into a cooperative cast. That might do it. Oh, and the sixth Fillory book manuscript. Do a Seeking Lost Objects spell on it, that way you’ll have proof you won’t have if I just tell you, but trust me, that’ll get you important information.” 

“Only half of that makes any sense!” Quentin snaps, throwing up his hands in frustration. “And what happened to you after the Beast? You killed yourself, and I don’t… Why?” 

“A lot of shit that hopefully won’t happen to you. And, yeah, we don’t always mind the idea of being dead in theory, but… whatever else I’ve said, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’d kind of like it if some timeline, somewhere, actually ended up a real win.” 

“What?” Quentin says, trying not to screech. “Can you be more cryptic!”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know how much of what I remember will hold! These are the only things I can think of that if they still pop up you can actually do something about,” White-Hair says. “And I’m beginning to wonder if this is why Fogg kept his mouth shut like an asshole.”

Quentin is about to say something else, but then a sudden pain jabs through his head. He yelps, pressing his hands to his temples and he thinks he hears voices, thinks he almost sees bright light in his eyes, thinks someone is telling him he needs to wake up and smoothing back his hair with a gentle hand — 

His last thought is that he shouldn’t be able to pass out in a hallucination.

He drifts, after that. He thinks he dreams, he could swear he hears Eliot and Gabriel talking to each other. And other things that make even less sense. 

_ Alice’s eyes turned to blue flame, Julia oddly emotionless, Eliot’s eyes blazing red.  _

_ An old man who asks “What did you do?”  _

_ “Just a minor mending,” Quentin says.  _

_ A kiss by torchlight, he’s kissing Eliot on a blanket, the taste of some sweet wine on their lips —  _

_ No, he’s in a bedroom, he’s kissing Margo, she’s kissing Eliot and then he’s kissing Quentin —  _

_ Alice is kissing him and they’re sitting on a chilly floor, Quentin hopes and  _ **_hopes_ ** _ it will be all right now — _

_ No, she’s kissing him in an unfamiliar kitchen and part of him wants it but part of him is cold and knows this is a mistake — _

_ Julia hugging him tight, Julia dropping a King of Hearts that looks like him into a fire, Alice beside her all in black and Kady on Julia’s other side holding her hand —  _

_ Eliot holding a peach before tossing it into the flames, Margo with a crown like Martin’s, at the same fire —  _

_ Margo’s holding that crown and he’s looking up at her, Quentin’s holding a crown and Eliot is looking up at him — _

_ Penny in a forest and the world is spinning, Penny in a suit, in a strange grey office —  _

_ Julia lying on the floor with Quentin and they’re looking at the Fillory map like they’re children again —  _

_ Margo in a crown like the books describe Jane’s, brushing back his hair and promising to send word if something changes, but what’s the something —  _

Quentin’s eyes open, just a little, and he can see… Oh for fuck’s sake, one of him is enough for anyplace, now there are three? But this one, he… This new counterpart’s hair is shaggy and red, shorter still than Quentin’s own but growing out from a short cut like White-Hair’s. More than that, though, Quentin can see one of his ankles isn’t flesk, but a black prosthetic. 

Well, fuck.

“I said, I came here for you. I didn’t tell you everything. I know about the timelines because we’ve all been working together. I’ve seen your people, because we’ve got two things on our list. One of them is getting you back. The other is fixing magic, again,” says the redheaded Quentin with one leg. 

“I don’t understand,” White-Hair says, and Quentin’s eyelids droop again, he loses track for a bit and this time he thinks he’s falling into a blazing golden sea. 

When he stirs again, the redhead is holding out his hand to his white-haired reflection, and Quentin wonders how this scene would look to an outsider, two men identical save for their hair and eyes, a third younger version with brown hair lying on the grass near their feet. 

“Come on,” says the redhead. “Don’t you want to go home?” 

“Home?” White-Hair’s voice is a whisper, desperate and shocked and hopeful all at once. Quentin watches, willing him to take the offered hand — he sees himself on a boat in the darkness, insisting on being tied to a mast rather than risk jumping, though he doesn’t know why he’d jump — but he’s too exhausted to speak up, to add his voice and say  _ don’t give up, we don’t  _ **_have_ ** _ to give up, do we?  _

Then. Then he does take it, and they’re both gone in a flash of burning gold and a softer, welcoming honey-amber glow. Then the light turns into lines, streaking up so the world cracks like shattered glass around Quentin — 

And he opens his eyes in the Brakebills infirmary.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It’s been almost three days since the attack, and by now Eliot is at least passingly familiar with all of Quentin’s little study buddies. He likes Kit or Maria best, he thinks, because they come and sit quietly. Or, when the silence is too much, they read out loud from a novel or even a textbook they brought along. Eliot never does the same, not trusting himself to say much of anything in front of someone who isn’t Margo.

The Morgan twins come by and carefully try to use their magic, but they can’t find anything clearer than the echo that Lipson described. 

“It feels almost like we’re hearing Quentin twice over, but that doesn’t make any sense,” Aislinn says, and Eliot wants to say nothing about any of this makes sense, but he doesn’t. The study buddies seem like good kids, and Aislinn’s shapeshifting trick probably saved Quentin’s life. He wonders if any of the others can do it. He’s pretty sure he saw some kind of bird tattooed on Maureen’s wrist, and he knows he saw a howling wolf on Gabriel’s arm. 

Gabriel. 

Margo says Quentin was very clear that he and Gabriel are just friends who fuck. Hell, Gabriel himself told Eliot he’s not Quentin’s boyfriend the first time they found themselves both sitting with Q together. It had made for a very awkward silence afterwards. 

This second time, the silence is still awkward, but not as painfully so. Margo’s around somewhere — she can’t just sit, it drives her nuts, but Eliot knows she’s around. She was talking with Alice and a recovering Penny earlier, he saw her through the glass. He’s not sure where exactly she is now, but he kind of wishes she’d show up so he’s not alone with Quentin’s fuck buddy. 

Well, functionally alone. Quentin is here between them, pale and still except for the rise and fall of his chest, showing no signs he might be waking up. Lipson says it’s a good sign that he’s breathing on his own, but it feels like a pretty hollow thing when there’s no progress at all. 

Without thinking, Eliot reaches up to brush his fingers through Quentin’s hair and down the side of his face. It makes something tight in Eliot’s chest loosen a little to feel Quentin’s skin still warm, to know he’s still alive even though he barely seems to be right now. It’s not until Eliot sits back with his fingers wrapped around Quentin’s hand that he looks up into green eyes and realizes Gabriel is watching him. 

“What?” It’s not quite hostile, which is the best Eliot can manage.

“Nothing. Just… you’re not much like your reputation, are you? The whole… decadent indifference shtick. You and Margo Hanson both, actually.”

_ “I’ve never really seen you care about something.”  _

_ “Things aren’t usually worth caring about.” _

_ “With some limited, but very important exceptions.”  _

_ “Very limited.” _

Eliot shakes off the memory. “There are always exceptions,” he says tightly, around the sudden lump in his throat. He refuses to squirm under that too-sharp gaze. This is not Gabriel’s business, whatever he and Quentin get up to in bed. 

“I didn’t mean anything by it.” 

“I didn’t say that you did.” 

Gabriel looks about to say something, but before he can, there’s a small sound like a sigh and both of them look at Quentin just as his limp fingers suddenly curl weakly around Eliot’s. “Q?” Eliot says, heart pounding. “Hey, come on, can you open your eyes for me?” Dimly he thinks he hears Gabriel say that he’ll get a healer, but Eliot is focused on Quentin. “Q, please.” 

And as if he were just waiting to be asked, Quentin’s eyes flutter open. “El?” he says, voice a hoarse whisper, a little smile on his face at seeing Eliot, even now. 

“Hey there,” Eliot murmurs, voice shaking. “You took your time waking up, Coldwater. You like scaring us?” 

“Sorry?” 

“Don’t be sorry,” Eliot says, and then Lipson and two other healers are in there, shooing Eliot and Gabriel out. Eliot… does not actually want to wait with the far too observant Gabriel. The healers will be a little while, long enough for him to try and find Margo. She’ll want to see Q too, and now that he’s awake it’ll be safe for Eliot to crack a little. Just a little, enough to let Margo hug him, enough to be upset where no one else will see. 

Except that before he finds her, he runs into Dean Fogg, following behind two — two stretchers bearing covered bodies. As Eliot watches, blood drips down from one of them, splattering vivid red on the pale linoleum. He slows to a stop, feeling suddenly sick. He has a bad feeling… “What happened?” he asks the Dean, and for a moment he could almost swear Fogg looks sympathetic.

That’s never good. 

“I’m afraid that I underestimated our security in the Clean Room for holding a prisoner,” Fogg says. “He could not use magic there, but brute strength… Eliza went to speak with him, and he broke his restraints. In his effort to escape, he killed her.” 

Eliot spares a thought for the enigmatic British woman who — who had been fucking annoying, truth be told, but probably still didn’t deserve the death that ‘underestimated brute strength’ implies. But then he looks at the second covered form. “There are two bodies,” he says through numb lips. 

“Yes. Miss Morgan’s assessment was correct as well, it turns out. There was indeed something malevolent inside Mr. McCormick, I’m afraid he didn’t survive it leaving him. He was found near the border of the wards.”

_ “And he knew you were… susceptible to a certain type, I’m afraid.”  _

A man is dead, after being turned into a puppet. A man Eliot never knew, used to make him fall in love, is dead because he was the right type to appeal to Eliot. To appeal to Eliot, and through Eliot to get close to Quentin — and Margo, and even Alice and Penny who Eliot doesn’t know that well, they’re all in the Beast’s crosshairs though — because he’s weak enough to fall for it. 

Eliot thinks of Quentin’s soft little smile when he woke up. Woke up in a hospital bed, because the thing riding Mike almost killed him. 

He can’t go back to that room. He can’t look at Quentin right now, or Margo, he can’t — there’s a body being wheeled away that Eliot knows intimately and not at all. God, he poisons everything, doesn’t he?

Eliot manages to say something. He doesn’t know what, but his tone sounds good, so it’ll have to do. He doesn’t really remember leaving the infirmary or even getting back to the Cottage. The next thing he really remembers is sitting on his bed with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. 

The burn of it down his throat makes him stop thinking, at least for a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alice and Penny were largely offscreen because I don't think Alice would ask for help unless she had to... and also I intend to come back to this in my planned PenQuinn companion piece.
> 
> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter! Or, for the RP inclined, cardtricksandminormendings.tumblr.com!

**Author's Note:**

> I feel I should note here that Quentin is assuming the worst for parts of this chapter...
> 
> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter! Or, for the RP inclined, cardtricksandminormendings.tumblr.com!


End file.
